The work Radiation-dominated injection of positrons generated by the nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process into a plasma channel by former epp intern Dominika M and epp members Bertrand M and Marija V is now out in the journal Physics of Plasmas. In this paper, electron-positron pair generation by an orthogonal collision of a multi-PW laser pulse and a GeV electron beam by the nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process was studied. Conditions required for positron deflection in the direction of the laser pulse propagation were analyzed, which favors injection into plasmas. Using the OSIRIS particle-in-cell framework, it was demonstrated that the radiation reaction triggered by ultra-high laser intensity plays a crucial role in the positron injection. It provides a suppression of the initial transverse momentum gained by the positrons from the Breit-Wheeler process. A fraction of the positrons that are deflected are available for direct laser acceleration in a plasma channel, providing a…

GoLP team members Carolina A, Chiara B, Bernardo M, Bernardo B, Nuno T and Mariana M went to Elba’s island in Italy to attend the 2023 edition of the European Advanced Accelerator workshop, held on 17-23 September 2023.
Bernardo M delivered a plenary talk, while Carolina A, Chiara B, Bernardo B and Nuno T presented a poster about their recent work.

GoLP team members Óscar A, Lucas A and Bernardo B attended the 8th edition of the Extreme Light Infrastructure Summer School (ELISS) in Dolní Břežany, Czechia, between August 29th and September 1st. The school intended to introduce a broad range of topics in the areas of intense laser pulses and laser-driven particle and radiation sources. The lectures were complemented by laboratory visits to the ELI Beamlines experimental halls and hands-on activities with ELI researchers. The school also included a poster competition in which Bernardo B received the 1st prize award.

GoLP team members Zahra M and Gonçalo V went to Crete Island in Greece to attend the FORTH-Onassis Foundation Lectures in Physics: Applications of Extreme Light, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, held on 2-8 July. The school was focused on extreme light, high harmonic generation, LWFA, strong field QED experiment, laser-plasma based proton & ion sources and their applications in science and society including quantum technologies, probing the microcosm, early cancer detection, and global food security challenges. The conference included a distinctive public lecture entitled “Passion Extreme Light: for the Greatest Benefit of Humankind” by Nobel prize winner Prof. Gerard Mourou (in the first picture below with Zahra and Gonçalo).

epp team members Thomas G, Ricardo F, Óscar A, Thales S, alumni Kevin S, Pablo B, Bernardo B, Bertrand M, Robert B and Frederico F (all in the picture below) attended the 49th European Physical Society Conference on Plasma Physics (EPS 2023), held on July 3-7 2023 in Bordeaux, France.
Frederico F (invited), Thomas G (contributed), Thales S (contributed), Kevin S (contributed), and Pablo B (contributed) delivered talks, whereas Ricardo F, Óscar A, Bernardo B, Bertrand M, and Robert B presented posters.

epp team members Jorge Vieira and Róbert Babjak went to Zhuhai, China to attend the 6th International Conference on Matter and Radiation at Extremes, held on 5-9 June 2023. Jorge V delivered the plenary talk named Superradiance and temporal coherence in plasma accelerators: New pathways towards FEL brightnesses in plasma. Róbert B presented an invited talk about the connections between laser focusing and efficiency of the direct laser acceleration. Topics covered at the conference were fundamental physics at extreme light, inertial confinement fusion, radiation and hydrodynamics, and others. 

Members of our team, including Filipe DC, Pablo  JB, and Luis OS, recently had the opportunity to participate in a groundbreaking experiment held at CERN’s SPS HiRadMat facility. The team led by Charles Arrowsmith and Gianluca Gregori from Oxford University, our researchers joined forces with experts from Oxford University, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Rochester University, University of Iceland, Max Planck Institute, and IST to contribute to the project. Leveraging our expertise in theory and simulations, our team played a significant role in ensuring the success of the experiment. It is worth mentioning that Filipe and Pablo actively assisted in data collection and provided valuable theoretical support during the experimental run at the renowned facility located in Geneva.
The experiment, aptly named Fireball (HRMT-62), has a primary focus on studying micro-instabilities in high-intensity electron-positron beams interacting with low-density plasma. By examining the interactions between a 440 GeV/c proton beam and a…

epp PhD student Diogo C was awarded one of the Fulbright Portugal 2023 PhD scholarships for research activities in U.S. institutions. This support will allow him to spend 9 months at the plasma physics group of the University of California, Los Angeles where he will be collaborating with Prof. Paulo Alves on the development of machine learning-accelerated plasma physics simulators.

Last week, the epp PhD students Robert B, Pablo B, and Rui T participated in the doctoral training School Plasmas in extreme environments: from Astrophysics to the Laboratory from the 1st to the 12th of May (2023) at Les Houches School of Physics, France. The school was organized with the help of the epp member Thomas G.
During the school, Robert B and Thomas G gave a talk during the school, and Pablo B and Rui T presented a poster.

As part of the celebrations of the 30th anniversary of GoLP our members showcased some of the work developed over the years in a dedicated booth at the XXVI Semana da Física organized by NFIST. Hopefully, this motivated some of the high school students who visited us during the week to learn more about lasers-plasma physics, and who knows, one day present their work from the other side of the stand.