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Congratulations Eduardo!

Congratulations to Eduardo Solis Meza, a York Fusion CDT student who successfully defended his thesis at viva in May 2022. Eduardo’s thesis is entitled “Study of extreme ultraviolet laser ablation for fusion applications” and his supervisors are Dr Erik Wagenaars and Professor Greg Tallents.

An abstract from Eduardo’s thesis is below:

“In this thesis we explored the underlying processes of laser-matter interaction at short wavelength lasers. Ablation processes for inertial confinement fusion are relevant for the compression stage. Different metals and polymers were ablated using a capillary discharge extreme ultraviolet laser (EUV) to understand and characterise the crater formation processes in these samples. A visible laser source was used to ablate the same materials and compare the different mechanisms in both wavelength regimes. Additionally, a time-of-flight mass spectrometer was used to ions formed during the interaction of EUV radiation with matter. Based on these results, a first approximation to develop an in-situ technique to measure the temperature of the plasma during the ablation process is presented. Finally, simulations of the creation of high density plasmas are used to understand the absorption and refraction effects during a laser-plasma interaction. These results were used to explore the capabilities of EUV or visible laser radiation to be used as backlight in optical diagnostic techniques”.

Well done Eduardo!