Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL)’s Post

Congratulations to our fantastic team from Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), Focused Energy, and UC San Diego for running our first proton focusing campaign on OMEGA-EP at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics! Our experiment investigated proton beam focusing techniques applied in so many ways to high energy density science. Most notably, they can generate the extreme environments only found in brown dwarf stars and the cores of planets like Jupiter, but now in a lab! One day, they may even be used to ignite #ICF capsules in fusion power plants! Special shout-out to my excellent team Sophia Malko, Xavier Vaisseau, Valeria Ospina Bohórquez, Maggie Rivers, Ryan Nedbailo, Mathieu Bailly-Grandvaux, Jesse Griff-mcmahon, Kirill Lezhnin and Frances Kraus for helping me lead my very first experiment as PI. It is truly a pleasure to work with you all. We are eternally grateful to Gabriel Schaumann and Sallee R. Klein and their teams for their wonderful work building and transporting our targets, to the entire OMEGA-EP control team for ensuring a successful shot day, and to Dr. Mingsheng Wei with the Laboratory Basic Science program (U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science) for this great opportunity.