Bruce Remington Honored with American Physical Society Award
November 2, 2022
NIF Discovery Science Program Leader Bruce Remington. NIF Discovery Science Program Leader Bruce Remington, a distinguished member of the technical staff at LLNL, has been honored with the American Physical Society’s (APS) 2023 George E. Duvall Shock Compression Science Award, which recognizes contributions to understanding condensed matter and non-linear physics through shock compression.
Since 1987, the award—the highest offered by APS in shock compression science—has biennially recognized contributions to understanding condensed matter and non-linear physics through shock compression.
Remington, who will receive a plaque citing his accomplishments at an upcoming APS meeting, was specifically honored “for pioneering laser-driven high-pressure, solid-state material dynamics in high-energy density regimes.”
Remington said there was some level of early skepticism in the community that researchers could create the relevant conditions, diagnose them adequately, control the levels of preheat and radiation background, and ultimately understand the results obtained for good materials science experiments.
“To address these challenges, we early on partnered with the international academic community and our fellow national laboratories in the U.S. and abroad to develop the required diagnostics, techniques, and understanding of our experiments,” he said.“This award suggests to me that our high energy density science (HEDS) focus area has matured to the level that it is accepted and now highlighted for recognition by the broader shock physics community. This is a rewarding milestone for our HEDS community.”
Remington received his bachelor’s degree from Northern Michigan University in 1975 and his Ph.D. in nuclear physics from Michigan State University in 1986.
He did a two-year postdoctoral appointment in nuclear physics at LLNL, then joined the Lab’s Laser Program (now the NIF & Photon Science Directorate) in 1988. He has been a staff physicist in the inertial confinement fusion (ICF) program and the HEDS program and has served as NIF Discovery Science program leader since 2014.
He is best known for his work in HED laboratory astrophysics, where he founded the High Energy Density Laboratory Astrophysics conference series in 1996 to foster this new science focus area. His areas of focus also include HED materials science, studying solid-state material dynamics at very high pressures and strain rates relevant to impact dynamics, planetary formation dynamics, and novel concepts for ICF.
Remington pioneered the use of high-energy lasers to study Rayleigh-Taylor driven plastic flows at high pressures, strains, and strain rates. He is author or coauthor on more than 400 publications.
He received the APS John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research for his work on ablation-front Rayleigh-Taylor flow instabilities, and the Edward Teller Medal in 2011 for “pioneering research and leadership in inertial fusion sciences and HED applications.” He is also an APS fellow.More Information:
—Michael Padilla
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