Marija V has delivered the IST Physics Department Colloquium on April 11 with the seminar “Extreme Laser-matter Interactions”. The Physics Department Colloquium is held every week and aims to show case national and international speakers of relevance to the research and educational activities of the IST Physics Department.

Diana A has been awarded her PhD on “Controlled Plasma Wakefield Acceleration for Particle Acceleration Towards the Energy Frontier” under the supervision of Jorge V and co-supervision of Luis OS. The thesis defense took place April 6 2018 in the presence of the thesis committee Profs. L. Alves, R. Bingham, P. Muggli, J.P.Bizarro, and J. Vieira. Many congratulations to the new Doctor Diana Amorim!

The mystery of X-ray emissions from comets has been solved by an international team integrating epp team researchers, Fabio C and Luis OS. This work was published today in Nature Physics.
Scientists have long wondered why comets can radiate X-rays, given that X-rays are normally associated with hot objects like the Sun but comets are among the coldest objects in the Solar system.
When comets travel through the Solar system they interact with the Solar radiation, the Solar wind and the Solar magnetic field. This produces a visible atmosphere (or coma), the characteristic cometary tail, and in some cases X-rays. These X-rays are generated on the sunward side of the comet where the Solar wind impacts the cometary atmosphere forming a bow shock.
To investigate how the X-rays are generated, an international team of scientists from 15 institutes performed experiments using the ultra-intense lasers available at the LULI facility in Paris,…

And they are “tasty”! Following our tradition (see News for the “2014 Natas”, News for the “2015 Natas”, News for the “2016 Natas”), the prizes for the winners of the image and video of 2017, the “natas” of visualization, were awarded to Fabio Cruz (left, and triple winner after wins in 2014 and 2016) and to Fabrizio Del Gaudio (right). The term “Nata” was coined by one of the previous winners Paulo Alves: “Nata” is a tasty Portuguese pastry that everybody likes. It’s as enjoyable as having our simulations running nicely on a big supercomputer. It can also mean being at the top, at a high level, important.” Many congratulations to the 2017 winners! The images and videos will be posted on the team website and over the next few weeks on GoLP’s Facebook page.

The paper “Laser absorption via quantum electrodynamics cascades in counter propagating laser pulses” by Thomas Grismayer et al has been selected by Physics of Plasmas in the collection of Impactful articles from 2017. This is a collection of top articles of 2017. The list is comprised of most cited, most downloaded, DPP Special Issue articles, and Editor’s Picks. These articles have been made free to download for a limited time.

GoLP members joined on sunny December 20 for another GoLP Xmas and New Year celebration. Besides having the tasty “bacalhau” and other season delicatessens there was still time for the canonical picture of (almost) all the team members in the front of IST’s Main building.

 

Many congratulations to Mariana M for being awarded the best MEFT MSc thesis in plasma physics, lasers and nuclear fusion in the academic year 2016/2017. Mariana’s thesis was on ““Influence of proton bunch and plasma parameters on the AWAKE experiment” supervised by Jorge V.

The 2nd EuPRAXIA Yearly meeting, held from November 20 to November 24 2017, was hosted at IST and organised by GoLP. This meeting gathered more than 80 participants coming from several European Countries. The goal of this project is to produce a conceptual design report for the worldwide first high energy plasma-based accelerator that can provide industrial beam quality and user areas (more information here). ​The Portuguese participation in the EuPRAXIA project is provided by GoLP. The EuPRAXIA is a project funded by the EU. The EuPRAXIA yearly meeting at IST was sponsored by IST and CGD.

Many congratulations to Rui T for his recent MSc graduation with a thesis on “Realistic modelling of vacuum polarization induced light scattering scenarios in extreme intense fields”, under the supervision of Thomas G.