I completed an MPhys as an undergraduate at York, with a project using a hybrid code to model electron transport in a structured target design for laser-plasma interactions. Now, I’m back at York for a PhD project in the same vein, again supervised by Dr Kate Lancaster.
The project is titled “hot dense matter creation via ultra-intense laser interaction with novel structured targets”. High-power lasers can achieve intensities high enough to generate relativistic
electron beams from small targets, and by structuring these targets, the efficiency of the interaction can be improved and the resulting electron beam controlled. This is of particular importance for the fast ignition regime in inertial confinement fusion. I’ll pursue this using both computation and experiment.