NSF-GACR: Strong Field QED Plasma Physics at PetaWatt-Class Laser Facilities

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

This award, enabled by the partnership between NSF and the Czech Science Foundation (GACR), supports a collaboration that combines expertise from the University of Michigan, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and ELI-Beamlines in the Czech Republic to develop tools for modeling experiments at high power laser facilities. With rapid recent progress in laser technology, high-power laser facilities can generate some of the most extreme electromagnetic fields in the universe by focusing the laser light down to a tiny spot. These fields can accelerate charged particles to near the speed of light in a fraction of a million billionth of a second, producing bright, point-like sources of radiation. In such strong fields, high energy gamma-rays can spontaneously decay into pairs of matter-antimatter particles, thus creating matter from light. This project will further chart a path to studying even more extreme laser intensities, aiming to develop ways to make dense and ultrashort duration beams of antimatter. This project will develop the required theoretical tools and investigate the conditions for experiments studying strong field quantum electrodynamics phenomena. A postdoctoral researcher will integrate codes for modeling the interaction point physics. This will enable detailed studies of quantum broadening of the electron spectrum, polarization and spin effects and determining the requirements for a laser facility to study avalanche- and shower-type cascades. This will enable design of experiments at existing laser facilities, including ELI-Beamlines. The project will also chart a path to the generation and behavior of lepton-photon plasma and establish a research collaboration between the NSF ZEUS Laser Facility at the University of Michigan and ELI-Beamlines in the Czech Republic. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.