NIF&PS Honors Five Summer Scholars

Five NIF & Photon Science summer scholars received top honors from the Directorate this month for posters showcasing their scientific projects at the Laboratory.

Three of the students, Tony Wang and Joseph Gordon of UC Berkeley and Spencer Jeppson of Brigham Young University, presented posters that ranked in the top 10 per cent during LLNL’s annual two-day, Lab-wide summer poster symposium on Aug. 8 and 9.

A week later, the NIF&PS Directorate hosted a "mini-symposium" to showcase Wang, Gordon, and Jeppson, along with Joshua Ludwig of the University of Alberta and Angela Chen of U.C. San Diego, as the top NIF&PS participants in the Lab’s poster event.

The five students displayed "incredible enthusiasm" and a "fire-in-the-belly" attitude while working at the Lab, said NIF & Photon Science Principal Associate Director Jeff Wisoff after he met with each scholar.

"It’s amazing to see the breadth of the projects, going across a wide spectrum, from detectors to fundamental optics effects," Wisoff said. "It’s always refreshing and invigorating to see them ready to go, roll up their sleeves, do the hard work and be excited about it."

The students were among a group of 57 NIF&PS summer scholars here this year, and Wisoff said he would like to see them consider working at the Lab.

"Whether they chose the laboratory or not, hopefully this is an experience which will broaden their horizons and make them think about going into a career in a related field, which is all good for the U.S.," Wisoff said.

Here’s what the five scholars presented:

• Chen, 21, ran computer simulations to calculate how Dante spectrometers measure x rays inside a target hohlraum using a variety of different parameters. The experiments were aimed at identifying trends in laser power and how the hohlraum was performing depending on these varying parameters. Chen, who graduated this year with a degree in physics, with a specialization in computational physics, plans to apply for graduate school in the fall. Last year, she interned with the Lab’s Physical and Life Sciences Directorate.
• Ludwig, 25, investigated new methods to achieve high bandwidth on high-power lasers for use in plasma photonics experiments and to look for ways to reduce laser-plasma instabilities in inertial confinement fusion and high energy density experiments. This was the plasma physics graduate student’s third summer at the Lab (Click here for more about Ludwig).

• Wang, 21, monitored changes that the anti-reflective sol-gel used on NIF optics undergos when exposed to different humidity and pressures. In particular, he examined how the coating loses thickness or water resistance with use. Wang is a material science and engineering major with a minor in electrical engineering. He now lives in Livermore but grew up in nearby Pleasanton and graduated from Foothill High School.

• Jeppson, 23, looked for ways to predict laser damage in hafnia-coated optics by scanning the optics before and after high-energy laser shots, cataloging areas of high-density luminescent photons and seeing if those correspond to areas of damage. Jeppson, who grew up in Livermore and graduated from Granada High School, is a senior chemistry major.

• Gordon, 22, employed the Geant4 (for GEometry ANd Tracking) physics simulation software package to examine how current NIF diagnostic tools are performing. The project is aimed at better characterizing uncertainties such as ion temperatures and hot-spot velocities and predicting ways to make diagnostic tools perform better. Gordon, who hails from the Chicago area, just graduated with a B.S. in nuclear engineering. He plans to find work as a researcher for a year before going on to graduate school.

The students had to adapt quickly after coming to the Lab.

Gordon, for example, said he first had to learn to use Geant4, "which took me a couple of weeks to learn. It’s pretty intimidating at first."

As for Chen, "I didn’t even know how hohlraum was spelled," she quipped.

Wang, Gordon, and Jeppson were among the 28 students who received awards of $150 from the Livermore Lab Foundation during the Lab-wide poster symposium.

NIF&PS Principal Deputy Principal Associate Director Jeff Atherton and Operations Manager Bruno Van Wonterghem also met with the NIF&PS scholars.

"I don’t worry about the future of the Laboratory when we’ve got young, really smart, and talented people like this coming through," Atherton said. "We’re going to be just fine."