Extreme Laboratory Astrophysics and high photon energy source development.

随着高功率激光设备的出现，如极限光基础设施(ELI)，聚焦的激光强度正变得足够大，能够激发与早期宇宙相关的天体物理过程。这些包括磁化的超音速湍流，(伪)标量场的产生，以及高能X射线和伽马射线源。在这个项目中，学生将参与开发基本的理论和设计可以使用这些机制的实验。实验工作的核心将集中在高能电子束与光学激光脉冲的碰撞，以便同时产生伽马射线脉冲(通过逆康普顿散射)和(伪)标量粒子。这项工作的应用既是为了理解极端天体物理过程，也是为了产生强烈的X射线和伽马射线脉冲。后者对于惯性聚变能量的材料研究将是重要的，并且与AWE有直接的关系。

With the advent of high power laser facilities such as the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI), the focussed laser intensity is becoming large enough to be able to excite astrophysical processes that are relevant to the early Universe. These include magnetized supersonic turbulence, generation of (pseudo)scalar fields, and high energy x-ray and gamma-ray sources. In this project, the student will be involved in developing the underlying theory and designing experiments that can access these regimes. The core of the experimental work will focus on high energy electron beam colliding with optical laser pulses in order to produce both gamma-ray pulses (by inverse Compton scattering) and (pseudo)scalar particles. The application of this work is both towards the understanding of extreme astrophysical processes as well as for the generation of intense x-ray and gamma-ray pulses. The latter will be important for material studies in inertial fusion energy and is of direct interest to AWE.