Find out who were the former students and graduates of GoLP and where they are now. AlumniLuis O. Silva
Jorge Vieira
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Principal Investigators
Luis O. Silva 
Luís O. Silva is IST Distinguished Professor, Professor of Physics at Técnico Lisboa (IST), and Visiting Professor in Physics at the University of Oxford. He obtained his degrees (Lic. 1992, PhD 1997 and Habilitation 2005) from IST. He was a post-doc at UCLA from 1997 to 2001. His scientific contributions are focused in the interaction of intense beams of particles and lasers with plasmas, from a fundamental point of view and towards their applications for secondary sources for biology and medicine.
He has authored more than 200 papers and 3 patents, was awarded two Advanced Grants from the ERC (2010 and 2015), served on the program/selection committees of conferences and prizes worldwide, and on the scientific/advisory committee of several EU infrastructures. He has supervised 17 PhD students and 16 post-doctoral fellows whose work was recognized with several prizes.
Luís O. Silva was awarded the 2011 Science Prize of TU Lisbon, the IBM Scientific Prize 2003, the 2001 Abdus Salam ICTP Medal for Excellence in Nonlinear Plasma Physics by a Young Researcher, and the Gulbenkian Prize for Young Researchers 1994. He was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society and to the Global Young Academy in 2009, Fellow of the European Physical Society in 2017, and Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences, and Corresponding Member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences in 2019.
Research Interests: Check my personal webpage here
Latest Publications:- Particle-in-cell simulations of pulsar magnetospheres: Transition between electrosphere and force-free regimes, Astronomy & Astrophysics 690 (2024) p. A229
- Laboratory Study of Magnetic Reconnection in Lunar-relevant Mini-magnetospheres, The Astrophysical Journal 969 (2024) p. 124
- Laboratory realization of relativistic pair-plasma beams, Nature Communications 15 (2024) p. 5209
Ricardo Fonseca
Ricardo Fonseca was born in Lisbon, Portugal on September 11th, 1973. He received his degree in Physics Engineering from the Instituto Superior Técnico in 1996 and joined the Laser and Plasma Group at this institute. In 2000 he spent one year at the University of California Los Angeles working on the numerical modelling of high intensity laser plasma interactions. He obtained his Ph.D. in Physics from the Technical University of Lisbon in 2002, on the subject of Laser-Plasma Electron Accelerators. He is a researcher for the Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear and in 2003 he took up a teaching position at ISCTE - Lisbon University Institute, where he is currently a teniored Full Professor. He has over 100 publications in leading scientific journals. He was awarded the Oscar Buneman award in 2000. He is currently the Dean of Technology and Architecture at ISCTE-IUL.
Latest Publications:- Particle-in-cell simulations of pulsar magnetospheres: Transition between electrosphere and force-free regimes, Astronomy & Astrophysics 690 (2024) p. A229
- OSIRIS-GR: General relativistic activation of the polar cap of a compact neutron star, New Astronomy 112 (2024) p. 102261
- Hosing of a long relativistic particle bunch in plasma, Physical Review Letters 132 (2024) p. 075001
Jorge Vieira
Jorge Vieira is an assistant professor at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) in Lisbon. He received his Licenciatura in Physics Engineering from IST. He was a visiting scholar at University of California and Los Angeles in 2006 and 2008 and received the PhD in Physics in 2010 from IST. Jorge Vieira was a post-doctoral fellow at IST from 2010-2012, held a Humboldt Fellowship at Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich during 2012-2013 and was am FCT researcher (development level) during 2016-2019. He has authored more than 80 papers and 1 patent. Jorge Vieira received the Technical University of Lisbon/DelloiteYoung Researcher Prize in the category of Physics in 2011 and received an excellent teacher award at IST in 2017.
Research Interests: My research employs advanced computing and theory to exploit the properties of intense lasers and particle beams towards compact plasma-based accelerators and light sources. The focus of my recent work is on structured light, on how it interacts with plasma at ultra-high intensity, and on superradiant emission mechanisms in plasma. I am involved in the AWAKE experiment at CERN, and, whenever possible, I collaborate with both theoreticians and experimentalists with whom I seek to participate and elaborate experimental proposals to test novel ideas.
Latest Publications:- Hosing of a long relativistic particle bunch in plasma, Physical Review Letters 132 (2024) p. 075001
- Coherence and superradiance from a plasma-based quasiparticle accelerator, Nature Photonics 18 (2023) p. 39-45
- Positron acceleration in plasma waves driven by non-neutral fireball beams, Physical Review Accelerators and Beams 26 (2023) p. 091301
Thomas Grismayer
Thomas Grismayer received a Master's Degree in Plasma Physics in 2003 at University Paris VI (France) with a specialization in Laser-Plasma interaction. Thomas Grismayer completed a PhD degree in Plasma Physics at the Centre de Physique Théorique of Ecole Polytechnique in 2007 under the supervision of Prof. Patrick Mora. Right after in 2008, Thomas Grismayer moved to the United States to work as a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Warren Mori, in the Plasma Simulation Group at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). In 2011, Thomas Grismayer received a post-doctoral fellowship from the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) and started to work in the Group for Lasers and Plasmas (GoLP) at Instituto Superior Técnico. In 2013 he was awarded a Starting Grant from FCT (Researcher) and he is currently continuing his research at GoLP.
Research Interests: - Ion acceleration in dense target irradiated by intense laser (plasma expansion models) - Parametric instabilities related to inertial fusion (nonlinear and multiple dimensional effects associated with electron plasma waves) - Shear instabilities (magnetic field generation, particle acceleration) - QED effects in plasma in extreme high fields laser setup (pair cascades, gamma-ray emission) and in astrophysics (magnetic reconnection, neutron stars modeling)
Latest Publications:- Particle-in-cell simulations of pulsar magnetospheres: Transition between electrosphere and force-free regimes, Astronomy & Astrophysics 690 (2024) p. A229
- OSIRIS-GR: General relativistic activation of the polar cap of a compact neutron star, New Astronomy 112 (2024) p. 102261
- Signatures for strong-field QED in the quantum limit of beamstrahlung, Physical Review A 108 (2023) p. 042816
Marija Vranic
Marija Vranic is currently a Post-Doctoral researcher at IST. She had her PhD from IST under supervision of Luis O. Silva. After the PhD, she spent some time in ELI Beamlines, working on laser-matter interactions at extreme intensities. She obtained her MSc degree in physics at the University of Belgrade, under supervision of Prof. Zoran Lj. Petrovic. During the undergraduate studies, she has done an internship in the area of laser-matter interaction at Queen's University of Belfast, with Prof. Marco Borghesi.
"My interest for physics was triggered at Petnica Science Center (http://www.petnica.rs/), a unique out-of-school learning facility where the students have an opportunity to do an independent scientific project, write a paper and even have their own interdisciplinary annual conference where they present their work. Here, one could hear about many "hot" topics of today's science, because most of the Serbian successful scientists around the world are Petnica alumni, and they are always happy to come back to talk about the science they are doing today. "
Extra curricular activities: tennis and dancing.
Research Interests: radiation reaction, wakefield acceleration, classical-QED transitions in plasma
Latest Publications:- Direct laser acceleration in varying plasma density profiles, New Journal of Physics 26 (2024) p. 093002
- Direct laser acceleration: A model for the electron injection from the walls of a cylindrical guiding structure, Physical Review E 109 (2024) p. 065204
- The influence of laser focusing conditions on the direct laser acceleration of electrons, New Journal of Physics 26 (2024) p. 053010
PhD Researchers
Thales Silva
Thales Silva is a dedicated researcher at GoLP specializing in fundamental plasma kinetic instabilities, laser-plasma interactions with an emphasis on laboratory astrophysics, and plasma-based accelerators. His work is at the forefront of exploring and understanding fundamental and complex behaviors of plasmas in many scenarios.
He earned his PhD from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, where his research focused on instabilities in the beam transport of space-charge dominated beams in linear accelerators. Following his PhD, he joined GoLP as a postdoctoral researcher during the EuPRAXIA preliminary design phase.
Since joining GoLP, he has contributed to various research areas, including:
- Laser-Plasma Instabilities: Generation of magnetic fields due to stimulated Raman scattering.
- Plasma Instabilities: Investigating instabilities like Weibel and electron cyclotron maser.
- Plasma Accelerators: Exploring the long-term evolution of plasma accelerators and positron acceleration.
He earned his PhD from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, where his research focused on instabilities in the beam transport of space-charge dominated beams in linear accelerators. Following his PhD, he joined GoLP as a postdoctoral researcher during the EuPRAXIA preliminary design phase.
Since joining GoLP, he has contributed to various research areas, including:
- Laser-Plasma Instabilities: Generation of magnetic fields due to stimulated Raman scattering.
- Plasma Instabilities: Investigating instabilities like Weibel and electron cyclotron maser.
- Plasma Accelerators: Exploring the long-term evolution of plasma accelerators and positron acceleration.
Research Interests: Density down-ramp injection in LWFA; ion motion, plasma heating, and long-time evolution in plasma accelerators; laser-plasma interaction.
Latest Publications:- Ring momentum distributions as a general feature of Vlasov dynamics in the synchrotron dominated regime, Physics of Plasmas 31 (2024) p. 052112
- Positron acceleration in plasma waves driven by non-neutral fireball beams, Physical Review Accelerators and Beams 26 (2023) p. 091301
- Weibel instability beyond bi-Maxwellian anisotropy, Physical Review E 104 (2021) p. 035201
Post-Doctoral Fellows
Lucas Ivan Inigo Gamiz
I was born in Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora, a region in the northwest of Mexico. In 2011, I attended the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, where I pursued a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics. After completing my undergraduate studies, I furthered my academic pursuits at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, where I obtained a Master of Science degree in Advanced Physics. Inspired by my research work and supervisors, I decided to pursue a Ph.D., commencing my doctoral studies in 2017. During my Ph.D., I focused on investigating streaming plasma instabilities in laser wakefield acceleration. I was awarded my Ph.D. in 2022.
Besides physics, I enjoy learning new skills, mountain biking, rock climbing/bouldering, music and film.
Research Interests: Laser-Plasma interactions, QED Cascades, Radiation Reaction, Plasma Instabilities, High-Field Physics, Machine/Deep Learning, Particle-in-Cell Codes.
Anthony Mercuri-Baron
I studied physics in the Magistère of fundamental physics of Orsay in France and did my master’s degree of theoretical physics in Paris-Saclay University. After that I started a Ph.D in Sorbonne University (former Pierre et Marie Curie university) in Paris, under the supervision of C. Riconda and M. Grech. My Ph.D. was focused on the theoretical and numerical study of electron-positron pairs creation in extreme fields, governed by strong-field QED. Part of this study was dedicated to the efficiency of pair creation in vortex laser beams. I am currently a Post-Doc at IST, and I am working in subjects closely related to my thesis such as the production of pairs in strong fields and their properties.
Research Interests: Strong-field quantum electrodynamics, QED cascades, electron-positron pair plasma, Particle-In-Cell simulations, ultra high intensity lasers.
Graduate Students
Rafael Almeida
Rafael Almeida was born in Viseu in 2000. He is now starting his first year of Master's programme in Physics Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico, while working under the supervision of Prof. Jorge Vieira and Marija Vranic studying the transport of optical angular momentum to charged particles. Apart from physics, his interests also include listening to music and biking.
Róbert Babjak
Robert was born in 1995 in Humenné, Slovakia. He obtained his MSc degree in computational physics at Czech Technical University in Prague. The master's thesis was supervised by Dr. Jan Psikal and was focused on hot electron generation mechanisms in the preplasma of thin overdense targets irradiated by the intense laser pulse. He is currently a Ph.D. student in the Group for Lasers and Plasmas under the supervision of Dr. Marija Vranic. The work is focused on the acceleration of electrons and radiation generation in underdense plasmas by high-intensity lasers.
Latest Publications:- Direct laser acceleration in varying plasma density profiles, New Journal of Physics 26 (2024) p. 093002
- Direct laser acceleration: A model for the electron injection from the walls of a cylindrical guiding structure, Physical Review E 109 (2024) p. 065204
- The influence of laser focusing conditions on the direct laser acceleration of electrons, New Journal of Physics 26 (2024) p. 053010
Zahra Mohammadzadehchamazkoti
Ankur Nath
Ankur was born in Agartala, India. He completed his master's from the National Institute of Technology, Agartala, in 2018, under the supervision of Dr. Biswajit Paul, with a thesis focusing on Scalar-field Cosmology, with exposure to the basics of general relativity. After his master's, he worked as a Junior Research Fellow in a project funded by ISRO, India focusing on the field of theoretical/computational Astrophysics -precisely about studying accretion disk physics of neutron star binaries. He is currently pursuing his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Luis O. Silva. His research aims to look at the extreme Plasma physics in astrophysical scenarios where strong magnetic fields are present. Besides physics, he enjoys music, drawing/painting, reading thrillers and playing football.
Diogo Carvalho
Diogo was born in 1995 in Lisbon, Portugal. He obtained his M.Sc. degree in Engineering Physics from Instituto Superior Técnico in 2018. For his Master's Thesis, he developed machine learning algorithms for fusion plasma tomography with applications to JET and COMPASS. After his studies, he was a research fellow for IPFN's FRIENDS project and later a trainee at the Artificial Intelligence & Operations Innovation Team of the ESA. Currently, he is a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Luís O. Silva (GoLP), Prof. Diogo R. Ferreira (IPFN), and Prof. E. Paulo Alves (UCLA) working on the intersection of machine learning and high performance computing for laser-plasma simulations.
Latest Publications:- Learning the dynamics of a one-dimensional plasma model with graph neural networks, Machine Learning: Science and Technology 5 (2024) p. 025048
Bhushan Thakur
Bhushan was born in 2000 in Mumbai, India. He graduated with a master’s degree focusing on particle accelerators at Université Paris-Saclay, where he completed his master’s thesis on simulating the behaviour of superconducting accelerating cavities at IJCLab in Orsay. Currently, Bhushan is pursuing his PhD at GoLP under the supervision of Prof. Jorge Vieira, working towards realising a compact and affordable light source based on the principle of Thomson scattering in plasma-based accelerators, with potential applications in health, material science research, and more. During his free time, he enjoys making chai while listening to music and going for hikes.
Research Interests: Laser wakefield acceleration, high energy radiation, PIC simulations.
Rui Torres
Rui Torres was born in 1994 in Lisbon, Portugal. He started as an intern at the theory and simulation team of Group of Lasers and Plasmas (GoLP)/IPFN to investigate the role of 6-photon scattering processes in the polarization of vacuum. He obtained his MSc degree in Engineering Physics at Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa (IST/UL). The topic of his MSc thesis was realistic modelling of vacuum polarization induced light scattering scenarios in extreme intense fields under the supervision of Professor Luís O. Silva and Dr. Thomas Grismayer. Thereupon, he was awarded a grant to further study the effects of an imperfect vacuum or imperfect electromagnetic pulses in the characterization of the QED signatures induced. Currently, his PhD work intends to explore magnetospheric plasma dynamics in the vicinity of rotating compact objects with general relativistic considerations.
Research Interests: Extremely High-Intensity Laser Physics, Vacuum polarization, QED processes below the critical Schwinger regime, High Harmonic generation from light scattering scenarios in extreme intense fields, general relativity, astrophysical plasmas, pulsar and black hole magnetospheres.
Latest Publications:- Particle-in-cell simulations of pulsar magnetospheres: Transition between electrosphere and force-free regimes, Astronomy & Astrophysics 690 (2024) p. A229
- OSIRIS-GR: General relativistic activation of the polar cap of a compact neutron star, New Astronomy 112 (2024) p. 102261
- Magnetic frame-dragging correction to the electromagnetic solution of a compact neutron star, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 524 (2023) p. 4116
Bernardo Malaca
Bernardo was born in 1995 in Alcanena, Portugal. He is pursuing a PhD in Engineering Physics in the field of spatiotemporally correlated light and its interaction with particle beams, under the supervision of Jorge Vieira and Ricardo Fonseca (GoLP). Before that he obtained the MSc degree at IST. The thesis focused on using genetic algorithms for optimising laser-particle interactions.
Research Interests: Laser Plasma Wakefield Acceleration, spatiotemporal correlated light pulses, particle-in-cell codes.
Latest Publications:- Coherence and superradiance from a plasma-based quasiparticle accelerator, Nature Photonics 18 (2023) p. 39-45
- Arbitrarily structured laser pulses, Physical Review Research 5 (2023) p. 013085
- Exact solutions for the electromagnetic fields of a flying focus, Physical Review A 107 (2023) p. 013513
Camilla Willim
Camilla received her master’s degree in physics in 2018 at the Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf (HHU), Germany. Her master’s project was directly related to laser–plasma physics and under the supervision of PD Dr. Götz Lehmann. She investigated two-dimensional plasma photonic crystals — plasma structures with unique optical properties.
Camilla is currently a graduate student at IST. She is pursuing her PhD in the Group for Lasers and Plasmas (GoLP) under the supervision of Prof. Jorge Vieira and Prof. Luís O. Silva. Camilla’s work focusses on non-linear optics of plasmas in the critical density limit at high intensities driven by structured light.
Latest Publications:- Proton acceleration with intense twisted laser light, Physical Review Research 5 (2023) p. 023083
Chiara Badiali
Chiara was born in 1995 in Rome.
She got her bachelor's and master's degree from Sapienza, University of Rome. During these years she focused particularly on Theoretical Particle Physics, covering also the basics of General Relativity and Plasma Physics.
She graduated with a thesis in collaboration with the ATLAS experiment at CERN, entitled "Truth Flavor Tagging Algorithm based on Recursive Neural Network Techniques for the ALTAS Experiment" under the supervision of prof. Marumi Kado. The dissertation was focused on data analysis and b-tagging using Machine Learning Techniques to optimize the latter.
She's currently involved in a Ph.D. at Instituto Superior Técnico in the Group for Lasers and Plasmas (GoLP) under the supervision of Prof. Jorge Vieira.
Latest Publications:- Machine-learning-based models in particle-in-cell codes for advanced physics extensions, Journal Of Plasma Physics 88 (2022) p. issue 6
Pablo Bilbao
Pablo received his master's in Physics in 2020 from Lancaster University in the UK. His work, supervised by Dr. Elisabetta Boella, was focused on proton acceleration via laser-plasma interaction. The main focus of his research was on understanding how different parameters affect Target Normal Sheath Acceleration and how to optimise them to achieve better proton beams. Pablo is currently pursuing a PhD within the Group for Lasers and Plasmas (GoLP) under the supervision of Prof. Luís O. Silva. He is studying the interaction between high energy radition and plasmas. Such setups can lead to novel acceleration and other interesting extreme plasma phenomena.
Research Interests: Laser-plasma interactions, Ion acceleration in dense target irradiated by intense laser, electron acceleration, astrophysical plasmas, particle-in-cell codes, high-performance computing
Latest Publications:- Laboratory realization of relativistic pair-plasma beams, Nature Communications 15 (2024) p. 5209
- Ring momentum distributions as a general feature of Vlasov dynamics in the synchrotron dominated regime, Physics of Plasmas 31 (2024) p. 052112
- Radiation reaction cooling as a source of anisotropic momentum distributions with inverted populations, Physical Review Letters 130 (2023) p. 165101
Óscar Amaro
Óscar Amaro was born in Faro in 1998. He is currently developing his PhD under the supervision of Dr. Marija Vranic on QED-Plasma Physics and Quantum Algorithms at Instituto Superior Técnico. This work addresses issues such as optimal positron production in laser-electron scattering in current and near-future Petawatt facilities and the possibility of using quantum computers to solve plasma physics problems.
Latest Publications:- QScatter: numerical framework for fast prediction of particle distributions in electron-laser scattering, Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion 66 (2024) p. 045006
- A Living Review of Quantum Computing for Plasma Physics, arXiv 2302 (2023) p. 20
- Optimal laser focusing for positron production in laser–electron scattering, New Journal of Physics 23 (2021) p. 115001
[Review]Filipe Cruz
Filipe Cruz was born in 1998, in Leiria, Portugal. He graduated in Physics Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico, and for his Master's thesis, he studied laser-driven, ion scale magnetospheres in laboratory plasmas through the performance of multiple collisionless particle-in-cell simulations. For his PhD, he is working under the supervision of Prof. Luís Oliveira e Silva to study broadband lasers as a way to mitigate the parametric instabilities that form in laser-plasma interactions.
Latest Publications:- Laboratory Study of Magnetic Reconnection in Lunar-relevant Mini-magnetospheres, The Astrophysical Journal 969 (2024) p. 124
- Laboratory realization of relativistic pair-plasma beams, Nature Communications 15 (2024) p. 5209
- Strong collisionless coupling between an unmagnetized driver plasma and a magnetized background plasma, Physics of Plasmas 30 (2023) p. 052901
Bernardo Barbosa
Born and studying in Lisbon, Bernardo Barbosa is currently doing his first year of Master's in Engineering Physics at Instituto Superior Técnico. At the moment, he is working on a project under the supervision of Marija Vranic in order to deepen his knowledge on the area of plasma physics and also to better understand the world of research in physics. Apart from physics, he also enjoys listening to music, and, if time allows, playing some videogames.
Latest Publications:- Creation and direct laser acceleration of positrons in a single stage, Physical Review Accelerators and Beams 26 (2023) p. 011301
MSc. Students
Francisco Assunção
Francisco was born in 2001 in Lisbon. He completed his Bachelor's degree in 2022 and is currently in his first year of the Master's programme in Physics Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico, with his main scientific interests being plasma physics and computational physics. He recently started working under the supervision of prof. Luís O. Silva, where he is studying particle drifts in astrophysical plasmas with ultra strong magnetic fields.
Besides physics, Francisco enjoys practicing the piano and drawing, and has an interest in animation.
Latest Publications:- Ring momentum distributions as a general feature of Vlasov dynamics in the synchrotron dominated regime, Physics of Plasmas 31 (2024) p. 052112
