Particles and Plasmas in Strong Fields

This binational WE-Heraeus seminar aims at establishing contacts and possible collaborations between groups in Germany and Hungary working in the field of “particles and plasmas in strong fields”, in particular on laser-matter interactions which are relevant for the development of new technologies to gain energy from inertial fusion.
This seminar will be organized by groups from the Institutes for Theoretical Physics (ITP) and for Radiation Physics (IRP) at the Helmholtzzentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) as well as from the CASUS Institute in Görlitz on the German side and from the HUN REN Wigner Research Centre of Physics (RCP) in Budapest on the Hungarian side.

The ITP team studies fundamental non-equilibrium phenomena such as the instability of the vacuum against pair creation and birefringence in strong (laser) fields. The IRP coordinates the operation of the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields (HIBEF) at the European X-ray free electron laser (XFEL) at DESY in Hamburg. Combining the world's most intense optical lasers and most advanced X-ray sources at HIBEF gives detailed information that for the first time allows for a direct glimpse on the femtosecond, nanoscale plasma physics involved in ultra-short, ultra-intense laser-solid interaction.
The CASUS team develops powerful modern simulation techniques and density functional theory for many-particle systems to study correlations in warm, dense plasmas and applications to inertial fusion plasmas and interiors of giant (exo-)planets and stars.
The HZDR and the University of Rostock have decided build the High Energy Density Institute (HEDI) in Rostock. This new Institute will boundle the expertise and deepen the insights into the physical processes taking place in inertial fusion experiments in order to accompany the technological realization of inertial fusion power plants.
The Wigner RCP team has a long-standing expertise in particle and plasma physics, in particular in nuclear and quark-gluon plasmas, with applications to heavy-ion physics, astrophysics of compact stars and cosmology. Recently, the team has created a new laboratory for NAnoPlasmonic Laser Ignited Fusion Experiments (NAPLIFE) and collaborates closely with the European Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) for attosecond pulses in Szeged.

The majority of contributions will be devoted to the topic of warm, dense matter and inertial fusion experiments, but a few prominent speakers are invited to widen the scope with contributions on fundamental physics questions related, e.g., to element synthesis in cosmology, nonextensive (Tsallis) statistics, Hawking-Unruh radiation and Sauter-Schwinger effect in strong laser fields.

Further information