Our team will host a mini-workshop on topological light-matter states in collaboration with CFTP and IT including presentations from Konstantin Bliokh (Riken, Japan), Jorge Vieira, Igor Ivanov (CFTP) and Mario Silveirinha (IT). The mini-workshop has the goal of exploring potential relationships between fundamental advances in nonlinear optics, photonics, plasma physics and high energy physics. More information about the program of the workshop, which will be held on October 28th (Anfiteatro Abreu Faro), can be found here.

EPP team members Jorge V, Thales S, Anton H, and Mariana M (all in the picture above) went to Isola d’Elba in Italy to attend the 4th European Advanced Accelerators Workshop, held on 15-21 September 2019.

Jorge V was one of the co-leaders of the theory and simulations working group and also attended the EuroNNAc meeting on the 22th of September. Thales S and Anton H delivered talks, whereas Mariana M presented a poster about their recent work.

In the most recent PRACE call for supercomputing time, Luis Silva and Jorge Vieira, GoLP/IPFN researchers and professors in the physics department, have received 36 million cpu-core hours for MareNostrum in Spain and 60 million cpu-core hours for Piz Daint in Switzerland, respectively. The award for Luis Silva is the second year renewal of the project PULSAR, aimed at understanding, from first principles, the magnetosphere of compact objects such as pulsars and black holes, and the award for Jorge Vieira is for the one year project OptiMom, with the goal of investigating how intense laser beams with exotic properties could enhance compact plasma accelerators and light sources. The estimated combined value of these awards exceeds 2 Million euros, and corresponds to the computing power of 11000 cores running continuously for one year.

Mariana M (in the picture) was awarded a PPCF/EPS/IUPAP PhD Poster Prize at EPS 2019 conference, with her “Study of beam hosing in different regimes”. The conference was held on July 8-12 in Milan, Italy.

EPP team members Ricardo F, Thomas G, Marija V, Thales S, Fabrizio del G, Mariana M and alumni Paulo A (all in the picture above) attended the 46th European Physical Society Conference on Plasma Physics (EPS 2019), held on July 8-12 2019 in Milan, Italy.

Thomas G (plenary), Thales S (contributed), and Fabrizio del G (invited at a satellite workshop on High-Field Laser-Plasma Interaction, HFLPI) delivered talks, whereas Ricardo F, Mariana M and Giannandrea I presented posters. Marija V was part of the programme committee and the organization of HFLPI.

EPP team members were at Encontro Ciência 2019 on July 8-10. In this annual meeting of the Portuguese researchers, held at Centro de Congressos de Lisboa, our team showed recent virtual reality (VR) demos, including results from simulations of plasma turbulence, neutron stars and laser wakefield acceleration. For three days, the meeting attendants could dive in the plasma realm and take a look at some of our research from a different, fully immersive perspective.

Our participation in this meeting was also covered by SIC Notícias and the YouTube channel of Encontro Ciência 2019.

The GoLP VR demos are done in collaboration with the Virtual Beamline team at ELI Beamlines, Czech Republic.

The Accelerator Research and Innovation for European Science and Society (ARIES) project is an Integrating Activity project which aims to develop European particle accelerator infrastructures. Our team has been involved in the modeling of plasma based accelerators, namely through our research on laser plasma accelerators driven by ultra-intense twisted laser pulses. Following the successful ARIES anual meeting in Budapest in 2019, IST will now host and organise the 3rd ARIES Annual Meeting, which will be held at IST from 20 to 24 April 2020. Click here and here for more info on ARIES and on the meeting.

Our team member Nitin S has successfully defended his PhD thesis on June 19, 2019. Many congratulations to Nitin (center) and all the best for his future life & sci endeavors In the picture, Nitin rejoices with his thesis committee (from left to right: Ricardo F, Jorge V, Nitin S, Bob Bingham and Tito Mendonça).

Hundreds of people visited Instituto Superior Técnico last Thursday (May 23rd) to celebrate its 108th anniversary. For the occasion, we let them dive into the plasma realm with virtual reality, sounds, images, and videos realized from our research (most of them available here).

Fabio C was awarded the best talk Journal of Plasma Physics prize at 2019 Les Houches Plasma Physics School, with his presentation on “Particle-in-cell simulations of pair discharges at pulsar polar caps”. Evan Heintz (University of Winsconsin), Alice Giroul (Queen Mary University of London) and Sonakshi Sachdev (Chennai Mathematical Institute) were also awarded talk and poster prizes. All prize winners and school organizers Benoît Cerutti (Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble), Miho Janvier (Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale) and Emmanuel D’Humières (Université de Bordeaux) are in the picture above.

The school was held at École des Physique des Houches in the Chamonix Valley, and focused on the multiple approaches to plasma physics, from laboratory to astrophysics. “Extreme Plasma Physics” was one of the advanced lectures of the school, delivered by Thomas G. More information about the school here.

Thomas G and Fabio C attended the 2019 Les Houches Plasma Physics School, held on May 13-24 at École des Physique des Houches, in the Chamonix Valley. The school, focused on the multiple approaches to plasma physics, from laboratory to astrophysics, covered a wide range of fundamental aspects of plasma physics, as well as on the state-of-the-art in many of its sub-disciplines. Thomas G delivered a lecture on “Extreme Plasma Physics”, and Fabio C gave a contributed talk on “Particle-in-cell simulations of pair discharges at pulsar polar caps”. With his presentation, Fabio C was awarded the best talk prize, sponsored by the Journal of Plasma Physics. More information about the school is available here.

GoLP organised and hosted the visit of Gérard Mourou to Portugal that included talks at Pavilhão do Conhecimento, at IST, and at U.Porto, with dinner with GoLP PIs, the president of IPFN, and the president of DF, and the visit to one of the CPA labs of GoLP.

Luis OS, Ricardo F, Thomas G, and Marija V attended SPIE 2019 in Prague, from April 1st to April 3rd to deliver invited talks on extreme plasma physics, exascale computing, beam-beam physics and probing strong-field QED, and positron and gamma ray sources from intense laser-matter interactions.This was also an opportunity to strengthen our ongoing collaborations and discuss joint projects with several of the attendees.

The CERN Accelerator School on High Gradient Wakefield Accelerators was held 11-22 March 2019, in Sesimbra, Portugal, with more than 90 participants and lecturers. The CERN Accelerator Schools are organised by CERN and this time, GoLP was responsible for the local organisation. Our team members delivered several talks, and were responsible for the hands on workshop on plasma simulations. The president of IST delivered one of the keynote special lectures, on Artificial Intelligence.

And you don’t need to go to Belém to get them, because the best are right here! Following our tradition (see the “2014 Natas”, “2015 Natas”, “2016 Natas”, “2017 Natas”), the prizes for the winners of the image and video of 2018, the “natas” of visualization, were awarded to Giannandrea Inchingolo (left, also 2016 winner) and to Miguel Pardal (right). The term “Nata” was coined by one of the previous winners Paulo Alves: “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 2018 winners! The images and videos have been posted on the team website here and will be posted over the next few weeks on GoLP’s Facebook page.

The IBM Prize was awarded January 16 2019 to Marija V in a ceremony at IST presided by the President of the Portuguese Republic. The official information from the Portuguese Presidency is here. Many congratulations to Marija on the prize and on the inspiring talk!

Marija V will be awarded the IBM Prize Jan 16 in a ceremony to be presided by the President of the Portuguese Republic at 5pm in Salão Nobre of IST. More information here.

We wish everyone, our friends, colleagues, and collaborators a great 2019! We look forward to another year of hard word, lots of fun, and exciting science!

Nitin S has been awarded 1250000 CPUh on the supercomputer Marconi (Cineca, Italy) in the framework of HPC-Europa3 Transnational Access programme. The HPC-Europa3 programme is supported by the EC Research Innovation Action under the H2020 Programme. It provides funding and offers access to European HPC centers. According to the programme, Nitin will visit Cineca for 4 weeks to closely work with researchers from the Supercomputing Applications and Innovation department. Nitin presented a project on collisionless shocks and was one of 45 selected candidates in this call. More information here.

Luís Braga defended successfully his MSc thesis on November 23, being awarded a final grade of 18/20.In his work, Luís evaluates the role of beam collimation at the input of a large aperture, single-pass grating compressor. The experimental setup investigated is the compressor at Vulcan’s laser Target Area West.An analytical model for space-time pulse propagation was developed, which adequately explains the influence of beam collimation on the observed pulse front tilt (PFT). Additionally, a new type of single-shot autocorrelator, capable of measuring pulse duration and PFT independently, was demonstrated.With this, a new mechanism for detecting and controlling the output PFT from a compressor was demonstrated. This work was a successful collaboration between our team at IST and the Vulcan team at the Central Laser Facility, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.Congratulations to all those involved, especially to Luís!