16:15 to 16:25
Welcome and Introduction
Saša Bajt, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (Germany)
Bedrich Rus, ELI Beamlines (Czech Republic)
Symposium Chairs

16:25 to 17:10
Exploring plasma physics with multi-petawatt laser pulses


Louise Willingale
Gérard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Science, University of Michigan (United States)

State-of-the-art multi-Petawatt laser facilities coming online include the Zettawatt Equivalent Ultrashort pulse laser System (ZEUS), a user facility being commissioned at the University of Michigan. The 3-PW pulses will make ZEUS the highest power laser in the USA. This talk will describe the various experimental approaches that can be used to produce ultrashort particle beams and light-sources, as well as their application to study strong-field plasma physics and beyond. One area of interest is to create extremely strong magnetic fields within the hot plasma in the laboratory, so we can study the microphysics likely to be occurring around the most energetic objects in the universe.

Louise Willingale is an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department and the Associate Director for the NSF ZEUS facility at the Gérard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Science. Prof. Willingale researches experimental high-intensity laser-plasma interactions, with a focus on relativistic electron heating, ion acceleration, proton radiography, magnetic-field generation, and reconnection. She received a MSci in Physics (2003) and a PhD in Plasma Physics (2007) from Imperial College London. In 2008, she moved to the University of Michigan, first as a Postdoctoral Researcher, then as an Assistant Research Scientist, before becoming an Assistant Professor in 2014. In 2018, she received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the NSF to study laser-driven magnetic reconnection and was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 2022 and is a Kavli Fellow.


17:15 to 18:00
Laser plasma accelerators


Victor Malka
Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel)

Laser Plasma Accelerators (LPA) rely on our ability to control finely the electrons motion with intense laser pulses. Such manipulation allows to produce giant electric fields with values in the TV/m exceeding by more than 3 orders of magnitude those used in current accelerator technology. Controlling the collective electrons motion permit to shape the longitudinal and radial components of these fields that can be optimized for delivering high quality electrons beam or energetic photons. To illustrate the beauty of laser plasma accelerators I will explain the fundamental concepts we recently discovered, and I’ll show the maturity of our approach in delivering particle and radiation beams for societal applications including for radiotherapy with the ebeam4therapy EIC project.

Victor Malka, Professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, has obtained his PhD thesis at Ecole Polytechnique in 1990. Before moving at WIS end of 2019, he was a CNRS Research Director at Laboratoire d’Optique Appliquée and a Professor at Ecole Polytechnique. He worked on different topics such as atomic physics, inertial fusion, and laser plasma interaction. His research work is now mainly devoted on relativistic laser plasma interaction, laser plasma accelerators, and their related societal applications in which he made several breakthrough contributions. He has published about 350 articles and has been invited in more than 175 international conferences. He got several international prizes and has coordinated many European projects. Victor Malka, fellow of APS and EPS, is member of the European Academy of science and officer of its physic division. He got several grants from the European Research Council and from the European Innovation Council.