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.

Last week, Filipe Cruz went to Oxford to attend the “Direct Drive and Fast Ignition Workshop 2023” and present a poster about his recent work.

Epp members (in the first picture) Rui T, Pablo JB, and Diogo C went to Princeton Center For Theoretical Science (Princeton) to attend the Joint PGI/PCTS Workshop, held on 24th-26th of April 2023. Diogo C and Pablo JB presented a talk about their recent work, and Rui T presented a poster.

A team of researchers from IST has recently published a paper entitled “Radiation reaction cooling as a source of anisotropic momentum distributions with inverted populations” in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters. This paper has been selected as Editor’s Suggestion, assigned to papers considered of be particularly important, interesting, and well written.
The study reveals a previously undocumented effect in plasma physics that alters the behavior of plasmas subjected to strong electromagnetic fields, potentially rendering them unstable and causing the emission of intense coherent radiation. This effect is thought to occur naturally in plasmas surrounding neutron stars. The paper’s lead author, PhD student Pablo J. Bilbao, conducted the research under the supervision of Professor Luís O. Silva of the Physics Department and GoLP/IPFN.
In classical electrodynamics textbooks, we all learn that charged particles accelerated in powerful electromagnetic fields radiate. When the particles are relativistic and the fields are strong, the…

Luis OS recently emphasized the importance of integrating ethical considerations into scientific research in an interview with Diário de Notícias here. With technological advancements in fields like AI and biotechnology, the impact of scientific research on society has never been greater.
According to Luis OS, it’s the responsibility of scientists to address the ethical dilemmas posed by new technology. Scientific education and training should prioritize ethics, including research design, ethics committees, and codes of conduct. By taking a proactive approach to ethical principles, scientific research can become more responsible for the benefit of society.
 

In a paper recently published in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters, entitled “Mitigation of the Onset of Hosing in the Linear Regime through Plasma Frequency Detuning”, a research team from IST, in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Germany, proposes a solution to a problem that threatens one of the existing concepts for a plasma-based particle accelerator. The problem consists of an instability that can develop when a particle beam propagates in plasma and is subject to the associated electric fields, which can be extremely strong, resulting in its potential disruption. This work is led by the Physics Department (DF) PhD student Mariana Moreira, under the supervision of Prof. Jorge Vieira from DF and GoLP/IPFN.
Plasma-based particle acceleration promises the emergence of much more compact and potentially cheaper accelerators. This idea was first put forward in 1979, and since then different possibilities of realizing the…

Following our tradition (see the “2014 Natas”, “2015 Natas”, “2016 Natas”, “2017 Natas”, “2018 Natas“ and “2019 Natas“), the prizes for the winners of the image, video, and VR of 2023, the “natas” of visualization, are finally announced.
The prizes awarded were:

Best image: Róbert Babjak and Rui Torres (tie)
Best video: Camilla Willim
Best VR visualization: Camilla Willim and Bertrand Martinez (tie)

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.” Nata is also a new open-source visualization framework recently launched by epp team members. Many congratulations to the 2023 winners! The images and videos have been posted on the team website here and will be posted over…