Thursdays 4:15–5:30 p.m.
Reception 3:45–4:15 p.m.
Student Q&A 2:15–3:00

March 6

A New Future for Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

Timothy Meyer, Deputy Director for Operations and Chief Operating Officer,
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

PPPL has been pursuing the dream of fusion power for more than 70 years. Have we made progress? What have we learned along the way? Is the finish line any closer or has the science already been solved? What about all those venture-capital-funded fusion startup companies? From the perspective of a particle physicist turned administrator, I will engage these questions and discuss the larger context for PPPL as a DOE national laboratory stepping into quantum sensors and materials, microelectronics, and sustainability science alongside the reinvigorated and all-important fusion mission.

Host: Genady Shvets

About the speaker: Timothy Meyer is the Deputy Director for Operations and Chief Operating Officer for PPPL.
He supports the lab in all aspects of operations, from strategy-setting, to day-to-day activities, to aggressively
implementing the PPPL Laboratory Plan and agenda. Tim holds a Ph.D. in experimental particle physics from
Stanford University and most recently was a deputy project director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory’s
project being built in South Dakota and Illinois to focus on neutrino physics. He also served a fi ve-year term as
Fermilab’s Chief Operating Officer. Prior to Fermilab, he worked at the TRIUMF laboratory, Canada’s national particle
accelerator center, as head of strategic planning and communication to help broaden the laboratory’s mission and
expand its operations.

Location: 700 Clark Hall (colloquium and reception), 220 Clark Hall (student Q&A)

March 13

Small Accelerators for Big 21st-Century Science

Mike Downer, University of Texas at Austin

Tabletop lepton accelerators in which particles surf on light-speed plasma waves driven by powerful laser pulses have accelerated electron and positron bunches to ~10 GeV, driven XUV free-electron lasers, and produced femtosecond X-ray pulses for many research and clinical applications. Their particle energy frontier is poised to reach tens of GeV, equivalent to SLAC, within the coming decade. I will review the physics, history, and state-of-the-art of these laser-plasma accelerators. I will then discuss current research in diagnostic and control strategies4 that will be vital for making them widely useful to science and society.

Host: Genady Shvets

About the speaker: Professor Mike Downer has supervised over 60 doctoral, masters, and undergraduate research dissertations since joining the University of Texas Physics Department in 1985.  He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of Optica (formerly the Optical Society of America), winner of a 2016 Humboldt Research Prize “in recognition of career-long accomplishments in research and teaching,” and a University Distinguished Teaching Professor. Downer’s research team is pioneering a new generation of electron accelerators driven by powerful femtosecond lasers, that are thousands of times smaller and cheaper than conventional accelerators and have spawned applications in areas ranging from materials science to medicine. He enjoys training students by challenging them to design and build experiments that fit on a tabletop, that they can get their arms and head around and call their own. When not teaching or supervising experiments, he enjoys teaching and leading the Hill Country Highland Dancers, an Austin-based Scottish Highland dance group.

Location: 700 Clark Hall (colloquium and reception), 220 Clark Hall (student Q&A)

March 20

How advanced plasma science will enable next-generation microelectronics manufacturing

Yevgeny Raitses, Principal Research Physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL)

Plasma is already essential to most of the processes used to make computer chips and memory. But the materials and processes must change as more of the semiconductor industry strives to mass-produce devices with features that measure less than a nanometer. This colloquium will discuss joint research from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and Princeton University to refine the use of plasma to craft 2D materials into 3D arrangements that are perfect down to the atom. The efforts are supported by CHIPs and Science Acts. This talk will cover new ways to predict and control plasma processing using advanced plasma reactors and laser-based diagnostics. It will also walk through an example of how an electron-beam-generated plasma can gently process sensitive materials, including 2D materials and diamond.

Host: Genady Shvets

About the speaker: Yevgeny Raitses is a Principal Research Physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory with expertise in experimental plasma physics. His more than 260 publications are on physics of crossed-field plasma devices, plasma-surface interactions, low temperature plasma and its applications to synthesis and processing of nanomaterials, and plasma diagnostics. Raitses received his PhD in Aerospace Engineering from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in 1997. He joined PPPL in 1998. His current research interests include e-beam generated magnetized plasmas, advanced plasma propulsion, and plasma diagnostics for semiconductor manufacturing. Dr. Raitses leads several projects and initiatives at PPPL including the DOE-Princeton Collaborative Low Temperature Plasma Research Facility (PCRF), advanced plasma propulsion physics, plasma-based nanosynthesis and nanofabrication of materials, including the most recent DOE-Microelectronics Science Research Center project on Plasma-Enabled 2D Materials for Energy-Efficient Microelectronics (PlasMat2D) project. Raitses is Fellow of the American Physical Society and an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Among many honors, Raitses received PPPL’s Kaul Foundation Prize for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research and Technology Development in 2019. He is also PPPL Distinguished Research Fellow since 2024.

Location: 401 Physical Sciences Building

March 27

Accelerating progress toward Fusion Energy

Troy Carter, Director, Fusion Energy Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

The R&D landscape for fusion energy has changed dramatically over the last several years with important scientific and technical progress alongside rapid growth in private sector investment. Getting to commercial fusion energy requires not only progress and innovation in the plasma physics of a fusion core, but also in materials that can withstand the harsh environment of a fusion device, in technology for breeding fusion fuel, and in enabling technology such as magnets and heating systems. It also requires that the private and public sectors find effective ways to partner. I’ll give an overview of the fusion energy program at ORNL, where capabilities across all of these important areas are present and progress is being made in partnership with fusion startups.

Host: Genady Shvets

About the speaker: Troy Carter was named Director of Fusion Energy Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in July 2024.Carter oversees the division’s world-class technical capabilities in plasma physics, fusion materials and fusion technologies. He is responsible for developing major projects such as the Materials Plasma Exposure eXperiment, or MPEX, and ORNL’s research contributions to the international ITER experiment.

Carter was previously a Professor of Physics at the University of California, Los Angeles for 22 years. There Carter was the Director of the Basic Plasma Science Facility (BaPSF), a national collaborative research facility for plasma science supported by DOE and NSF. He was also the Director of the Plasma Science and Technology Institute (PSTI), an organized research unit at UCLA. His research into waves, instabilities, turbulence and transport in magnetically confined plasmas is motivated by the desire to understand processes in space and astrophysical plasmas as well as by the need to develop carbon-free electricity generation via nuclear fusion. He is a Fellow of the APS and is a recipient of the APS DPP John Dawson Excellence in Plasma Physics Research Award.

Carter has served on a range of advisory committees for the plasma physics and fusion research communities, including the DOE Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee, the Scientific Advisory Board (Fachbeirat) for the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, and Program Advisory Committees for the DIII-D and Alcator C-Mod tokamaks and the NSF Frontier Center for Magnetic Self Organization. Carter served on the NASEM Committee for the 2020 Decadal Assessment of Plasma Science and led the DOE FESAC Long Range Planning process that resulted in the 2021 report “Powering the Future: Fusion and Plasmas.” He was awarded the Fusion Power Associates Leadership Award in recognition of his fusion community leadership contributions.

Carter received B.S. degrees in Physics and Nuclear Engineering from North Carolina State University in 1995 and a Ph.D. in Astrophysical Sciences from Princeton University in 2001.

Location: 700 Clark Hall (colloquium and reception), 220 Clark Hall (student Q&A)

April 24

How to Improve a Modern Radiation Treatment of Cancer: A dream? Naivety? Arrogance? … Or a Necessity

Karol Lang, Jane and Roland Blumberg Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at Austin

About 50% of all cancer patients are subjected to radiation therapy that may be further improved by broader use of proton treatment and better monitoring of the result of each therapeutic radiation session. The in-vivo image-guidance and dosimetry of proton irradiations, generically known as proton range verification, are some of the most underinvested aspects of radiation oncology. They trail behind other advances in radiation therapy due to the scarcity of sensitive instruments compounded by the lack of treatment protocols for precision monitoring of effects of beam radiation. This is despite that such measurements may dramatically enhance the treatment accuracy and lower the post-radiation toxicity, thus improving the entire outcome of cancer therapy.

We will discuss the motivation of designing and building a positron-emission-tomography (PET) scanner for assisting in proton irradiations. It is critical that proton therapy becomes more accessible and of better quality as an essential component of “precision personal medicine” that is currently beginning to shape modern medicine. We also present selected results of our pre-clinical experiments with a FLASH proton beam and discuss other related ideas towards improving and expanding the use of PET detectors for proton therapy.

Host: Genady Shvets

About the speaker: Karol Lang is the Jane and Roland Blumberg Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches and conducts research in experimental particle physics and in nuclear medical imaging. He received his M.Sc. in Physics from the University of Warsaw, and his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester.

Lang has participated in experiments conducted at accelerators at Fermilab, SLAC, BNL, and CERN, and underground laboratories in Soudan, Modane and Gran Sasso. Currently, he is involved in the Fermilab program to study long baseline neutrino oscillations and in experiments designed to search for neutrinoless double beta decay. As a spinoff of these experimental programs, he is also involved in research to develop and employ high sensitivity positron emission tomography (PET) scanners for the in-beam image-guided proton therapy, elucidation of the FLASH effect, and the total body imaging.

Location: 700 Clark Hall

May 1

Relativistic optics and multi-GeV laser-driven particle accelerators

Howard Milchberg, Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and Distinguished Professor, University of Maryland, College Park

During the past 30-plus years, the remarkable increase in peak laser intensity—greater than six orders of magnitude—has spurred new and exciting advances in laser-driven sources of relativistic charged particles and light, along with the new field of indestructible plasma optics. I will discuss our recent results demonstrating acceleration of electrons up to 10 GeV in just 30 cm—a distance 5,000 times smaller than required using conventional technology, and then highlight the physics building blocks that made such a result possible.

Host: Genady Shvets

About the speaker: Howard Milchberg received his B. Eng. in engineering physics from McMaster University and a Ph.D. in astrophysical sciences from Princeton University. He is the recipient of an NSERC Postgraduate Fellowship (National Research Council of Canada), a NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, the APS John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research, and the APS Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America. He is a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and Distinguished University Professor at Maryland, where he holds a joint appointment with the departments of Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Location: 700 Clark Hall