New Light Source Project
aiming for unique studies of microscopic motions in matter of all kinds

HEDS Workshop

The New Light Source (NLS) Workshop on High Energy Density Science (HEDS) will be held in the Pickavance Lecture Theatre at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory on 20th May, 2008, commencing at 10.00 am, and finishing before 5.00 pm.  The aim of the workshop is to bring together members of the laser-plasma, high-energy-density, and high pressure community to discuss and help define the key science drivers for the NLS.

The NLS will be a 4th generation source, and it is foreseeable that it will be able to operate in the XUV and hard X-ray regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, as well as producing longer wavelengths (e.g. in the THz region).  Current 4th generation sources (such as FLASH), and those coming on line next year (such as LCLS) operate, or start operations, with pulse-lengths of order 100-fsec.  However, there are many proposed schemes to reduce pulse-lengths to femtoseconds or shorter.

Such a source is of great potential interest to the community in that:

  1. It could produce uniform, hot dense matter for EOS or opacity studies.
  2. Focussed intensities potentially rank with those in the optical regime (i.e. up to 1018Wcm-2).
  3. The peak spectral brightness of the beam could be 10 orders of magnitude brighter than any synchrotron, and thus would be an excellent backlighter for many laser-plasma experiments, if a ‘conventional’ laser were to be built alongside the NLS.
  4. The spent electron beam could also act as an interesting plasma-creator, or plasma probe.
  5. The system would be very high rep rate compared with optical means of producing laser-produced plasmas.
  6. Such as source could exploit many ideas of the laser-plasma XUV laser community built up over many years.
  7. Significant overlap with the developing field of laboratory astrophysics are possible.
  8. If combined with a  conventional nanosecond laser, the diagnosis of the phase of transiently isentropically compressed solids to ultra-high pressures may be achievable.
  9. As a probe, there could be a good case for such a source for experiments relevant to the HiPER project.

Our remit is to think as creatively as we can about what the science challenges are in our field, and how a 4th generation source might impact upon them, without at this stage restricting ourselves to the full details of the source.

Program

09:30Coffee and Registration
 
10:00Introduction to the Workshop
Justin Wark, STFC Photon Science Research Institute
10:15 HEDS Science on 4th Generation Sources: An Overview
Richard Lee, LLNL
11:00 Inelastic Scattering from Warm Dense Matter
Gianluca Gregori, University of Oxford
11:30Coffee Break
 
11:50 X-ray Diffraction from Dense Plasmas
Dave Riley, QUB
12:20 Theory of Warm Dense Matter
Dirk Gerricke, University of Warwick
12:50Lunch
 
14:00Discussion Session 1:
Where are we now:  LCLS/FLASH/Artemis/XFEL
14:20 Shocks and Isentropic Compression:  New forms of Matter?
Justin Wark, University of Oxford
14:50 Propects for High Pressure Physics
Malcolm McMahon, University of Edinburgh
15:20Tea
 
15:50 Laboratory Astrophysics
Nigel Woolsey,  University of York
16:20Discussion Session 2: HEDS Wishlist for NLS + Working Group Formation
 
17:00Close