The experimental results from the Fireball (HRMT-62) project, achieved last year at CERN’s SPS HiRadMat facility, have now been published in Nature Communications and featured in the prominent Portuguese newspaper, Público. Our team, including Filipe Cruz, Pablo J. Bilbao, and Luis O. Silva, played a key role by providing numerical simulations that helped design the experimental platform. Under the leadership of Charles Arrowsmith and Gianluca Gregori from Oxford University, the project brought together researchers from institutions such as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Rochester University, University of Iceland, Max Planck Institute, and IST, showcasing a strong international collaboration.

The experiment focused on generating high-density, quasi-neutral electron-positron plasmas by directing a 440 GeV/c proton beam at a specially designed target. This effort marks a significant milestone, as it is the first successful creation of such plasmas in a controlled laboratory setting. The data collected revealed that the generated electron-positron beams exhibited the necessary conditions for collective plasma behaviour, opening new avenues for exploring the microphysics of pair plasmas, which are challenging to study through simulations or astronomical observations.

The results from this experiment have profound implications for our understanding of extreme astrophysical phenomena, such as those observed in blazar jets and gamma-ray bursts. These findings offer a deeper insight into the fundamental physical processes occurring in these high-energy environments.

We are proud to have contributed to this collaborative effort, which not only furthers our knowledge of the universe but also exemplifies the power of international scientific cooperation.