Automation of a laser wakefield accelerator

In the summer of my first year, I read about plasma accelerators and how they accelerate particles over significantly shorter distances compared to conventional accelerators. I reached out to Professor Zulfikar Najmudin in the laser-plasma group at Imperial College London for a summer project. This was my first exposure to plasma physics, and I learned much about what physics research would entail! My project involved creating a control system with Python to automate gas jet experiments and analysis in the lab. Besides my main project, I also worked with another summer intern to model and characterize a pulsed magnet using B dot probes and a Rogwoski coil. Based on these measurements, we proposed an improved design for the magnet to reach the target B-field strength.

I very much enjoyed my time with the lab. In my second year, I continued working part-time, assisting with interferometry set-ups, and automating phase-retrieval and tomography codes. It was here that I eventually learned about PIC code (and so it would begin my ‘PIC code career’ in the next few years)!