The Abreu Faro Prize is awarded to the best PhD thesis in the two preceding years in the fields of Electrical Engineering, Informatics, Mathematics and Physics (and Physics Engineering). The prize is sponsored by Anacom. In 2017, a honourable mention of the the Abreu Faro Prize was awarded to Paulo Alves, epp team alumnus, now at SLAC/Stanford University. Paulo Alves presented a short video testimony and the certificate of the award was received by epp team PhD student Fabio C (in the picture, with the President of IST).

Thomas G, Marija V, and Luis OS attended the 1st Journal of Plasma Physics Frontiers in Plasma Physics conference in Spinetto, from May 23 to May 26 and had the opportunity to interact with epp team alumni (Frederico Fiuza also in the picture), friends, and colleagues. The conference (by invitation only) adressed pair plasmas and plasma physics in extreme (astro)physical environments, 3D magnetic cages (stellarators), and magnetokinetic self-organisation and was attended by some of the leaders in the field. Thomas G delivered two talks.

Luis OS has published an opinion article in Jornal i “Uma solução à procura de um problema?” in portuguese, motivated by the Dia dos Cientistas on May 16 and the 1939 seminal essay “The usefulness of useless knowledge” by Abraham Lexner. The article is also available here, with additional supporting material.

From April 24 to April 27, epp team members Marija V, Jorge V, and Thomas G attended SPIE Prague 2017 to deliver several invited talks on two of the conferences ongoing within SPIE Prague 2017, in particular in  Laser Acceleration of Electrons, Protons, and Ions and Research Using Extreme Light: Entering New Frontiers with Petawatt-Class Lasers.

Luis OS has been elected fellow of the European Physical Society at the last meeting of the EPS Council. His citation reads “For his outstanding theoretical and numerical contributions in laser plasma interaction in the relativistic regime”. In 2017, the EPS elected three new fellows, increasing the total number of fellows to 85. Luis OS is the first Portuguese physicist elected to fellow status. The EPS was founded in 1968, with 42 national “EPS Member Societies” and 2500 individual members, representing more than 120,000 members all over Europe.

Our team was invited to present some of our ongoing projects at Futurália March 30 2017 as part of the FCT presence in the event. Besides lots of visitors it was an opportunity to showcase GoLP’s new merchandise.

New collectibles and merchandise from GoLP are now available!

We have started a new initiative to foster training in plasma physics using computer simulations taking advantage of a new set of self-contained PIC codes developed by Ricardo F taking advantage of all the know-how built around Osiris. The initiative is led by Jorge V and will soon be deployed in classes at IST, and opened to all the community. More information here.

The 10 years of the European Research Council are celebrated this week all over Europe #ERC10yrs. Thank you very much for the support to our group through Accelerates (AdG2010) and InPairs (AdG2015).

The radio show 90 segundos de ciência, featuring science made in Portugal, has highlighted the work of the epp team on pair production with ultra intense lasers and in astrophysics (episode 73). More information here.

Following our tradition (see News for the “2014 Natas” and News for the “2015 Natas”), the prizes for the winners of the image and video of 2016, the “natas” of visualization, were awarded to Fabio Cruz (left, and double winner after the 2014 award) and to Giannandrea Inchingolo (right), with the corresponding iPad Mini. As one of the previous winners Paulo Alves nicely described ““Nata” is a tasty Portuguese pastry that everybody likes. It’s as enjoyable as having our simulations running nicely on a big supercomputer. It can also mean being at the top, at a high level, important.” Many congratulations to the 2016 winners!

Marija Vranic has been awarded a FCT Post Doctoral Fellowship to work in our team. Many congratulations to Marija on this prestigious recognition!

The first edition of the APPLAuSE Workshop was held on January 18th at Centro de Congressos, IST. In this event, the epp PhD students enrolled in the APPLAuSE doctoral program – Giannandrea I, Anton H, Fábio C, Fabrizio DG and Mario G – presented the recent developments of their work in oral and poster presentations. This workshop also hosted an IPFN colloquium by Luis OS, with the title ‘Extreme Plasmas: from surfing at the speed of light to boiling the vacuum’.

The recent paper by Jorge V in Physical Review Letters is featured on the cover of the Physical Review Letters issue of December 23 2016. The paper is published here.

As part of the celebrations for the holidays, GoLP gathered at MAAT in Belém for another GoLP Day on Dec 16.

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation announced last week the winners of the 2016 edition of its prestigious Prize for Stimulus to Scientific Research. Victor Hariton is one of the two winners in the physics category, for his project “Fab-Laser – Femtosecond ablation of biological samples with shaped laser pulses”.

The proposed work addresses the challenge of how to optimize the interaction between ultrashort laser pulses and solid targets, with particular application to tissues of biological interest. With proper spatial and temporal shaping, such laser pulses could deposit their energy in a much more efficient way, avoiding damage to nearby tissues.

Victor has recently completed his Master’s degree in Physics Technological Technician, and is interested in modeling and design of ultra-high energy lasers and its application in industrial and scientific areas.

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation established the Program for Stimulating Research with the aim of stimulating the creativity and quality of scientific research among…

One of the 2016 Gulbenkian Prizes for Stimulus to Scientific Research in the area of “Earth and Space Sciences” was awarded Fábio C for his project “Multiscale modeling of pulsar magnetospheres”.In this project, Fábio will model pulsar magnetospheres – one the most extreme and exotic environments in the Universe – using advanced numerical tools, capable of solving the self-­consistent collective dynamics of the electron­-positron (e-e+) plasmas surrounding these compact astronomical objects. Moreover, by resorting to ab initio massively parallel simulations, it will be possible to model, for the first time, the formation process of the e-e+ cascades in the vacuum gaps of pulsar magnetospheres due to quantum electrodynamical (QED) processes in a realistic geometry. Understanding the self-consistent dynamics of these e-e+ cascades that supply the pulsar magnetospheric plasma, and bridging this microscopic scale physics with a global, macroscopic model, will allow an identification of the key signatures in the electromagnetic (incoherent and coherent, from the radio to…

A new paper by Jorge V et al just accepted in Physical Review Letters demonstrates how to generate high orbital angular momentum harmonics in close analogy with high harmonic generation of the laser frequency. The paper is already available on arXiv here.

The Osiris consortium (UCLA/IST) has signed MoUs with several institutions in the world to provide access to our software infrastructure. Find those institutions in the map (also here).

GoLP and epp team alumni Samuel Martins and Luis Gargaté have been featured in the news due to the rise of MEFT to the top position in the ranking of grades in Portugal to enter the University (here and here).