Our team has been awarded a second Advanced Grant from the European Research Council in the most recent call. Luis O. Silva was first awarded an Advanced Grant in 2010. This is the first time a researcher working in Portugal in Physical Sciences and Engineering (one of the three major areas of the ERC) has been awarded twice with an Advanced Grant. Luis O. Silva is also the youngest scientist in Europe in Exact Sciences to be awarded twice with an Advanced Grant (data from 2015).

According to the European Research Council, the “ERC Advanced Grants are designed to allow outstanding research leaders of any nationality and any age to pursue ground-breaking, high-risk projects in Europe.”

The project, called InPairs, aims to study how intense electromagnetic fields, such as lasers, can be converted into matter and anti-matter, a direct illustration of Einstein’s E = mc2. Using the fastest supercomputers in the World, the project will study the collective interactions between electron, positrons, ions and photons in the presence of ultra intense fields. These extreme environments can be found in some of the most spectacular events in the Universe, such as neutron stars and pulsars. The project also aims to identify the laboratory conditions, for instance at the focus of ultra intense lasers, where such effects can also be relevant and lead to the generation of high quality gamma ray sources.