Phillip Sprangle

Last updated
Phillip A. Sprangle
Born (1944-09-27) September 27, 1944 (age 78)
NationalityAmerican
Education Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (B.S.)
University of Puerto Rico (M.S.)
Cornell University (Ph.D.)
Awards
Scientific career
Fields Plasma physics
Thesis  (1973)

Phillip A. Sprangle (born September 27, 1944, in Brooklyn) is an American physicist who specializes in the applications of plasma physics. [1] He is known for his work involving the propagation of high-intensity laser beams in the atmosphere, [2] the interaction of ultra-short laser pulses from high-power lasers with matter, [3] nonlinear optics and nonlinear plasma physics, [4] free electron lasers, [5] and lasers in particle acceleration. [6] [7]

Contents

Early life and career

Sprangle received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1967, a master's degree from the University of Puerto Rico in 1969, and a Ph.D. in applied physics from Cornell University (where he had been since 1969) in 1973. From 1972, he was at the Naval Research Laboratory, from 1982 as a senior scientist. There he headed the beam physics department. He is a professor at the University of Maryland.

Honors and awards

In 2008, Sprangle received the IEEE Plasma Science Award, in 1991 the International Free Electron Laser Prize, in 1986 the E. O. Hulburt Science and Engineering Award, in 2008 an award as Top Navy Scientist and Engineer of the Year and in 2012 the Fred E. Saalfeld Award for Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Scientist from the Office of Naval Research. [1]

In 2013, he received the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics, for “pioneering contributions to the physics of high intensity laser interactions with plasmas, and to the development of plasma accelerators, free-electron lasers, gyrotrons and high current electron accelerators". [8] [9]

He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America and the IEEE. [10]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory</span> Research center at Stanford University

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a federally funded research and development center in Menlo Park, California, United States. Founded in 1962, the laboratory is now sponsored by the United States Department of Energy and administrated by Stanford University. It is the site of the Stanford Linear Accelerator, a 3.2 kilometer (2-mile) linear accelerator constructed in 1966 that could accelerate electrons to energies of 50 GeV.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free-electron laser</span> Light source producing extremely brilliant and short pulses of radiation

A free-electron laser (FEL) is a light source producing extremely brilliant and short pulses of radiation. An FEL functions and behaves in many ways like a laser, but instead of using stimulated emission from atomic or molecular excitations, it employs relativistic electrons as a gain medium. Radiation is generated by a bunch of electrons passing through a magnetic structure. In an FEL, this radiation is further amplified as the radiation re-interacts with the electron bunch such that the electrons start to emit coherently, thus allowing an exponential increase in overall radiation intensity.

A particle beam is a stream of charged or neutral particles. In particle accelerators, these particles can move with a velocity close to the speed of light. There is a difference between the creation and control of charged particle beams and neutral particle beams, as only the first type can be manipulated to a sufficient extent by devices based on electromagnetism. The manipulation and diagnostics of charged particle beams at high kinetic energies using particle accelerators are main topics of accelerator physics.

Plasma acceleration is a technique for accelerating charged particles, such as electrons, positrons, and ions, using the electric field associated with electron plasma wave or other high-gradient plasma structures. The plasma acceleration structures are created either using ultra-short laser pulses or energetic particle beams that are matched to the plasma parameters. These techniques offer a way to build high performance particle accelerators of much smaller size than conventional devices. The basic concepts of plasma acceleration and its possibilities were originally conceived by Toshiki Tajima and John M. Dawson of UCLA in 1979. The initial experimental designs for a "wakefield" accelerator were conceived at UCLA by Chandrashekhar J. Joshi et al. Current experimental devices show accelerating gradients several orders of magnitude better than current particle accelerators over very short distances, and about one order of magnitude better at the one meter scale.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Self-focusing</span>

Self-focusing is a non-linear optical process induced by the change in refractive index of materials exposed to intense electromagnetic radiation. A medium whose refractive index increases with the electric field intensity acts as a focusing lens for an electromagnetic wave characterized by an initial transverse intensity gradient, as in a laser beam. The peak intensity of the self-focused region keeps increasing as the wave travels through the medium, until defocusing effects or medium damage interrupt this process. Self-focusing of light was discovered by Gurgen Askaryan.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Breit–Wheeler process</span> Electron-positron production from two photons

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Chandrashekhar "Chan" Janardan Joshi is an Indian–American experimental plasma physicist. He is known for his pioneering work in plasma-based particle acceleration techniques for which he won the 2006 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics.

Norman Rostoker was a Canadian plasma physicist known for being a pioneer in developing clean plasma-based fusion energy. He co-founded TAE Technologies in 1998 and held 27 U.S. Patents on plasma-based fusion accelerators.

John Robert Cary is a professor of physics at the University of Colorado Boulder and CEO of Tech-X Corporation, which he co-founded in 1994.

Nathaniel Joseph Fisch is an American plasma physicist known for pioneering the excitation of electric currents in plasmas using electromagnetic waves, which was then used in tokamak experiments. This contributed to an increased understanding of plasma wave–particle interactions in the field for which he was awarded the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics in 2005 and the Hannes Alfvén Prize in 2015.

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Ryutov is a Russian theoretical plasma physicist.

Valery A. Godyak is a Russian-American physicist who specializes in plasma physics. As a scientist, he made fundamental contributions to the understanding of radio frequency (RF) induced discharges in plasmas as well as in associated nonlinear phenomena. As an industrial physicist, he developed induction lamps such as the Icetron-Endura RF lamp and received honors from companies such as Osram Sylvania and Siemens.

Jürgen Meyer-ter-Vehn is a German theoretical physicist who specializes in laser-plasma interactions at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics. He published under the name Meyer until 1973.

Patrick Mora is a French theoretical plasma physicist who specializes in laser-plasma interactions. He was awarded the 2014 Hannes Alfvén Prize and 2019 Edward Teller Award for his contributions to the field of laser-plasma physics.

Toshiki Tajima is a Japanese theoretical plasma physicist known for pioneering the laser wakefield acceleration technique with John M. Dawson in 1979. The technique is used to accelerate particles in a plasma and was experimentally realized in 1994, for which Tajima received several awards such as the Nishina Memorial Prize (2006), the Enrico Fermi Prize (2015), the Robert R. Wilson Prize (2019), the Hannes Alfvén Prize (2019) and the Charles Hard Townes Award (2020).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victor Malka</span> French physicist (born 1960)

Victor Malka is a French plasma physicist and a pioneer in laser plasma acceleration. In 2004, Malka demonstrated that high energy monoenergetic electron beams could be generated using the technique of laser wakefield acceleration, and subsequently used them to develop compact X-ray and gamma radiation sources with applications in medicine, security technology and phase-contrast imaging. For these contributions to the field, he was awarded the IEEE Particle Accelerator Science and Technology Award in 2007, the Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics in 2017, and the Hannes Alfvén Prize in 2019.

Sergei Vladimirovich Bulanov, is a Russian physicist. He received the 1983 State Prize of the USSR, the 2016 Hannes Alfvén Prize for "contributions to the development of large-scale next-step devices in high-temperature plasma physics research", and the Order of Rising Sun with Gold Rays and Rosette in 2020.

Thomas W. L. "Tom" Sanford is an American plasma physicist who developed a multi-wire array for use in a pulsed Z-pinch plasma system which resulted in a breakthrough for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research. In 2005, he was awarded the Hannes Alfvén Prize with Malcolm Haines and Valentin Smirnov for his contributions to the field.

Warren Bicknell Mori is an American computational plasma physicist and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was awarded the 2020 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics for his contributions to the theory and computer simulations of non-linear processes in plasma-based acceleration using kinetic theory, as well as for his research in relativistically intense lasers and beam-plasma interactions.

References

  1. 1 2 Suplee, Anne. "Sprangle, Phillip - UMD Physics". umdphysics.umd.edu. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  2. Sprangle, Phillip; Peñano, Joseph; Hafizi, Bahman; Gordon, Daniel; Scully, Marlan (2011). "Remotely induced atmospheric lasing". Applied Physics Letters. 98 (21): 211102. Bibcode:2011ApPhL..98u1102S. doi:10.1063/1.3584034. ISSN   0003-6951.
  3. Esarey, E.; Sprangle, P.; Krall, J.; Ting, A. (1997). "Self-focusing and guiding of short laser pulses in ionizing gases and plasmas". IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics. 33 (11): 1879–1914. Bibcode:1997IJQE...33.1879E. doi:10.1109/3.641305. ISSN   1558-1713.
  4. Peñano, Joseph; Sprangle, Phillip; Ting, Antonio; Fischer, Richard; Hafizi, Bahman; Serafim, Phillip (2009). "Optical quality of high-power laser beams in lenses". JOSA B. 26 (3): 503–510. Bibcode:2009JOSAB..26..503P. doi:10.1364/JOSAB.26.000503. ISSN   1520-8540.
  5. Roberson, C. W.; Sprangle, P. (1989). "A review of free‐electron lasers". Physics of Fluids B: Plasma Physics. 1 (1): 3–42. Bibcode:1989PhFlB...1....3R. doi:10.1063/1.859102. hdl: 2027/mdp.39015018983083 . ISSN   0899-8221.
  6. Esarey, E.; Sprangle, P.; Krall, J.; Ting, A. (1996). "Overview of plasma-based accelerator concepts". IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science. 24 (2): 252–288. Bibcode:1996ITPS...24..252E. doi:10.1109/27.509991. ISSN   1939-9375.
  7. Esarey, Eric; Ride, Sally K.; Sprangle, Phillip (1993). "Nonlinear Thomson scattering of intense laser pulses from beams and plasmas". Physical Review E. 48 (4): 3003–3021. Bibcode:1993PhRvE..48.3003E. doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.48.3003. PMID   9960936.
  8. "2013 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics Recipient". American Physical Society. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  9. "Dr. Phillip Sprangle Receives Prestigious Maxwell Prize in Plasma Physics". News. November 15, 2013. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  10. "Sprangle Awarded 2013 Maxwell Prize". eng.umd.edu. Retrieved February 25, 2020.