Michael Chini, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Physics, Ohio State University

 

2024 Experimental Physics Investigators

Michael Chini, Ph.D.
Image Credit: Karen Norum, University of Central Florida
 

Research Description

Intense laser fields can accelerate electrons and ions close to the speed of light and have the potential to open new frontiers in relativistic quantum electrodynamics, such as the creation of electron-positron pairs from vacuum. However, the achievable laser peak intensities have increased only modestly since the first petawatt lasers came online in the late 1990s and early 2000s, due to limitations in the amount of energy that can be amplified within a femtosecond pulse.

Michael Chini’s group plans to create a novel light field synthesizer, in which high-energy femtosecond laser pulses are split in time and frequency, spectrally broadened to cover multiple octaves of frequency from the infrared to ultraviolet, and synthesized into sub-optical-cycle electric field transients and arbitrary optical waveforms. By reflecting these pulses from specially designed plasma mirrors, the pulses will be further compressed to durations of around 100 attoseconds and focused to orders-of-magnitude higher intensities than what can be achieved using today’s laser pulse amplifiers. These approaches will be deployed at laser user facilities, at the current limits of laser power, to realize beyond-relativistic plasma conditions that are currently only accessible in astrophysical processes.

Research Impact

Dr. Chini’s research could lead to new approaches to laser-based accelerators, to produce new sources of particle and photon beams for fundamental research, cancer therapies, fusion energy, and nuclear waste remediation. In addition, the research will be conducted using new laser platforms with high repetition rate and high wall-plug efficiency, thus promoting the development of more sustainable laser-based accelerator platforms.

 
 

related links

Experimental Physics Investigators Initiative Science Ohio State University, Department of Physics Back

Education

PhD, University of Central Florida
BS, McGill University

Affiliated Investigators