Savio Rozario passes PhD

Savio Rozario and examiners Roland Smith and Chris Murphy

JAI student Savio Rozario passed his PhD with his thesis title "Novel injection and targetry in laser wakefield acceleration".

Savio's thesis explores the use of nanometre scale, solid density collection of atoms as a means to inject particles into a laser plasma accelerator. Experiments performed using the TA2 and TA3 Astra Gemini laser facility show that these targets can increase the accelerated charge of the electron beam and generate bright, 10 keV x-ray radiation.

His thesis also explores multi-dimensional input parameter space for the optimisation of wakefield accelerators. A variable length gas cell is used where the density and cell length are sequentially varied and the optima for electron beam charge, maximum energy and minimum beam divergence are identified. Using particle-in-cell simulations, a model which extends the scaling laws to predict the dephasing and depletion limitations of these accelerators is shown.