Undergraduate Education

This is an introductory course on plasma-based acceleration, including laser wakefield and plasma wakefield acceleration.  The course will introduce students to the physics of how lasers and charged particle beams propagate through plasmas, how they excite plasma wave wakefields, and how particles are loaded into and are accelerated in these wakefields. The nomenclature of the subject will be introduced and why this topic is currently of great interest will be explained.  This course is suitable for graduate students or upper division undergraduate students with an interest in this promising multi-disciplinary field. The course is also appropriate for physicists or engineers working in accelerator-related fields who wish to familiarize themselves with plasma-based accelerator concepts.

This course provides an in-depth introduction to the field. The lectures will be based primarily on the book on high-energy-density physics authored by Prof. R.Paul Drake. See the HEDSS website

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The Optics in the City of Light Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) typically offers 8 undergraduate junior level students the opportunity to spend 2 months in a variety of laboratories in Paris performing research with a wide range of ultrafast lasers. Optics, especially the new discoveries in Extreme Light, is one of the most exciting areas of science. Students will spend one week in Ann Arbor at GM-CUOS for orientation, safety training, preparation for living in France, and immersion into the Ann Arbor laboratories of the REU faculty. Students will also learn basic lab skills as well as basic reporting skills. Students will begin the weekly reporting process that involves preparing a summary and analysis of the previous week’s work. Each student will also prepare a short presentation describing what they think they will be doing for their research in France. These presentations will be sent to the faculty involved in each project. In addition, each student will maintain an electronic notebook (a blog) that all team members will be able to access.