New faculty member, Chowdhury, wins DOE grant for studying ultra-intense laser material interaction

Assistant Professor of Material Science and Engineering, Dr. Enam Chowdhury has won a Department of Energy (DOE) award totalling $410,000 (2019-2022) under the High Energy Density Laboratory Plasmas (HEDLP) program to develop a high spatial and temporal resolution optical probe and single atom probe to study materials, especially nano-structured surfaces interact and evolve under extreme laser intensities.

Over the last three decades, studies in ultra-intense laser matter interaction have opened doors to exciting fields like laser wakefield acceleration of GeV electrons, multi-MeV ion acceleration, neutron generation, and non-linear QED effects like laser induced positron generation. To understand and model these complex phenomena, one needs a careful measurement of the peak focal intensity and target surface modification by the laser in situ with ultrafast time resolution (>100 THz frame rate equivalent). These measurements are extremely difficult to perform with petawatt class lasers with pulse energy exceeding 10 J. With the next generation lasers with peak powers 10 – 100 PW being designed and constructed around the world, these challenges would only become more difficult.

Under this program, Chowdhury proposes to develop a novel in situ peak intensity measuring technique valid till ~1026 W/cm2 and a time resolved in situ surface probe with micron spatial and 10 fs temporal resolution. Deployment will take place at two LaserNetUS laboratories  ̶  the Advanced Beam Laboratory at Colorado State University and the BELLA facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ̶  each with high repetition rate petawatt class laser systems.

LaserNetUS is a DOE-supported consortium of seven top laser laboratories in the country, of which one is the Scarlet Laser Facility at Ohio State whose design and construction was led by Chowdhury in 2016.