News

  Members of the HEDS division made a strong showing at this year's LaserNetUS meeting, presenting work performed at facilities across the US. The winning posters were: Armin Bergermann (Postdoc), for "First-principles simulations of X-ray Thomson scattering in warm dense carbon using real-time TDDFT" Jhonnatan Gama Vazquez (PhD Student), for "Enhanced proton acceleration due to recirculation in target normal sheath acceleration" Daniella Fenster (Summer Intern), for "Microst...

Claudia Parisuaña's recent paper "Shock Propagation in Aerogel and TPP Foams for Inertial Fusion Energy Target Design" was selected for the Physics of Plasmas Early Career Collection 2025, highlighting outstanding papers published by the next generation of plasma physicists. Congratulations to Claudia!

The new High Energy Density Initiative (HEDI) was founded in Rostock, a new center for research on matter at extreme conditions, bringing together expertise from the University of Rostock and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, both long-term collaborators of the HEDS division. Among the first major research priorities are the projects  “Mixtures of Light Elements at Megabar Pressures”  and  “Dynamic Properties of Hot Dense Matter at Gigabar Pressures”, and it will play...

  SLAC hosted the Ultrafast X-ray Summer School this week, chaired by Ben Ofori-Okai, introducing students to cutting-edge work being performed at LCLS and other XFEL facilities. As well as lectures on different scientific areas, the students had the chance to share their current research, and work with mentors to prepare proposals for LCLS.

  Anna Katherine Dawes was awarded the NSF GRFP. Congratulations!

Is putting carbon-free laser-driven fusion energy on the grid by the 2030s possible?

At the US IFE conference in Washington D.C., HEDS students were recognized for their outstanding poster presentations.  Erika Hunting was awarded the Targets, Materials, and IFE Applications prize for her poster "Studying ultrafast structural dynamics in W-Re", while Dani Brown won the Advancements in Ion and Proton Acceleration for IFE prize for "Resolving Species Contributions in Multi-Ion Spectra". Congratulations to both of them, along with all the other winners!