CREOL and Department of Physics Joint Colloquium: Dr. Félicie Albert - From fusion plasmas to particle accelerators – applications of high power lasers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Thursday, March 24, 2022 noon to 1 p.m.

Abstract: This colloquium will discuss recent results obtained at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where high power and high intensity lasers are used in High Energy Density (HED) Science experiments, the study of matter in extreme conditions.

The first part of the talk will present recent progress toward achieving ignition at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), a 192 beam, megajoule-class laser facility. We will discuss results which have yielded more than 1.3 MJ of energy in 2021, marking a significant advance in ICF research. ICF can be achieved by using high power lasers such as the NIF to drive a spherical implosion. In the indirect-drive approach to ICF, laser-produced x-rays rapidly heat the surface of a capsule containing deuterium-tritium (DT) fuel, and the blowoff plasma accelerates the DT fuel inwards in a rocket-like reaction. Then, the fuel stagnates, creating a hot central core, surrounded by a dense confining shell. Finally, the core ignites, and fusion burn propagates into the dense shell, yielding many times the input energy.

The second part of the talk will review particle acceleration in laser-driven plasmas as an alternative to generate x-rays, and in particular present some experiments at LaserNetUS facilities, a consortium of 10 high power lasers in America. A plasma is an ionized medium that can sustain electrical fields many orders of magnitude higher than that in conventional radiofrequency accelerator structures. When short, intense laser pulses are focused into a gas, it produces electron plasma waves in which electrons can be trapped and accelerated to GeV energies. This process, laser-wakefield acceleration (LWFA), is analogous to a surfer being propelled by an ocean wave. Betatron x-ray radiation, driven by electrons from laser-wakefield acceleration, has unique properties that are analogous to synchrotron radiation, with a 1000-fold shorter pulse.

About the speaker: Félicie Albert is a scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the National Ignition Facility and Photon Science directorate, and the deputy director for LLNL’s center for High Energy Density Science Center and Jupiter Laser Facility. She serves as the current chair of LaserNetUS, a network for 10 high power lasers in North America. 

Félicie earned her PhD in physics in 2007 from the Ecole Polytechnique in France, her MS in Optics from the University of Central Florida in 2004, and her BS in engineering from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Physique de Marseille, France, in 2003. Her areas of expertise include the generation and applications of novel sources of electrons, x-rays and gamma-rays through laser-plasma interaction, laser-wakefield acceleration, and Compton scattering. She has conducted many experiments using high-intensity lasers at various facilities around the world.

Félicie received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2019, was awarded a 2016 DOE Early Career Research Program Award to develop new x-ray sources for high energy density science experiments and has been leading several Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) projects at LLNL. She is the recipient of the 2017 American Physical Society (APS) Katherine E. Weimer Award for outstanding contributions to plasma science research and of the 2017 Edouard Fabre Prize for contributions to the physics of laser-produced plasmas. She was elected a senior member of the Optical Society (OSA) in 2019, a Fellow of the APS (Division of Plasma Physics) in 2019 and a National Academy of Sciences Kavli Fellow in 2020.

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Joint Colloquium Spring Colloquium Series