James Rosenzweig, UCLA distinguished professor of physics, has been selected to receive one of 13 research awards from the U.S. Department of Energy for work in particle accelerator science and technology.
Rosenzweig’s project, will be supported by a grant of $2.8 million over three years, concerns theoretical and experimental studies in accelerator physics, with applications touching a wide variety of interdisciplinary science.
Rosenzweig’s Particle Beam Physics Laboratory is a state-of-the-art center for research into beam physics and accelerator technologies, with a dual emphasis on frontier research and training the next generation of researchers in these burgeoning fields.
“The practitioners of accelerator science can thus be placed in a tradition of instrument development dating back to Galileo,” Rosenzweig said. “Beam physics is a vibrant, cross-disciplinary enterprise, which intersects heavily with high-energy density science, plasma physics, ultra-fast lasers, nonlinear dynamics and various technologies. Applications extend from the energy frontier in particle physics, to ultra-fast phenomena in biology and materials, and to industrial and medical uses.”
His laboratory’s research includes the creation of ultra-fast, high-brightness electron beams; the application of such beams to advanced accelerators using lasers and plasmas; and the creation of new types of light sources. Indeed, the X-ray free-electron laser, now a workhorse of imaging sciences, was created based on foundational research at UCLA. Advances in novel high-brightness beam research supported by this DOE grant include extension of exciting new results recently published in the journal Nature Physics.
