Author archive for Luis O. Silva

The epp team has been awarded an equivalent of 8000 years of computation on Fermi by PRACE for the project “Amplification and propagation of intense tailored laser pulses in underdense plasmas” (co-PIs: M. Vranic, J. Vieira, L. O. Silva). The project will explore how specially tailored pulses (with orbital angular momentum, pre-designed spectral features, or tailored intensity profiles e.g. sequences of trailing pulses) interact with plasmas and their potential impact on a wide range of scientific and technological applications. The project of the epp eam was selected together with 17 others among the total of 107 proposals submitted to the 11th PRACE call.

Jorge V will present an invited talk at the upcoming ICHED 2015 in San Diego. His talk will address “Large Scale Magnetic Field Generation In Laser Under-Dense Plasma Interactions” focusing on the results recently published in Nature Physics.

epp team members Thomas Grismayer and Kevin Schoeffler will deliver two invited talks at the upcoming 57th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics, November 16-20, 2015 in Savannah, Georgia. Thomas G talk will address QED cascades in ultra intense laser pulses, while Kevin S will speak about the generation of Biermann battery fields in laser-plasma interactions and the interplay with the Weibel instability.

Over the past week, all the members of the epp team, along with other GoLP members, showcased their recent work in invited talks, oral contributions and posters, covering several areas of plasma physics, along with other fruitful and informal interactions with the leaders of the field that visited Lisbon for the EPS 2015.

GoLP has signed an MoU with the Center for Relativistic Laser Science of the Institute for Basic Sciences of South Korea, during the visit of Prof. Chang Hee Nam, the director of CoReLS, to Lisbon. The MoU aims to strength the collaboration between the groups on high intensity laser matter interactions.

Our recent paper on the spatio-temporal theory of the current filamentation instability by V.B. Pathak et al published in the New Journal of Physics has been selected by the editors as IOP Select. These are the articles from the last 12 months that have been chosen by the editors for their novelty, significance and potential impact on future research.

Luis OS will present the talk “In Silico Plasmas Under Extreme Intensities” at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory Colloquium on May 12, 2015. More information is available here.

 
 Elisabetta B, Joana M, Jorge V, Marija V, Thomas G, and Luis OS attended the SPIE Conference 2015 in Prague from April 13 to April 16, delivering several invited talks and oral and poster contributions. This year, SPIE covered many of the hot topics in ultra intense laser matter interactions, laser-plasma acceleration, radiation generation and QED effects, with many interesting results being presented.
 

Luis OS, Elisabetta, Joana, and Marija attended the École de Physique des Houches on Turbulence, Magnetic Fields and Self-Organisation in Laboratory and Astrophysical Plasmas. The school is running from March 23, 2015 to April 3, 2015 in the beautiful Chamonix Valley, an ideal setting for introspection, lively discussions with the 100+ participants, and winter sports! The École de Physique des Houches has a long tradition of hosting schools on some of the most exciting physics topics. More information on the School here.

On March 20, Marija successfully defended her PhD thesis in Physics at IST entitled “Extreme laser-matter interactions: multi-scale PIC modelling from the classical to the QED perspective” with the highest mark. The thesis committee was composed of Victor Malka, Peter Norreys, Jorge Romão, Ricardo Fonseca, Marta Fajardo and Luis OS. Many congratulations to Marija!