I am a first year DPhil student in Professor Peter Norreys' group. Before arriving in Oxford, I completed a Master's degree at the University of Warwick in Maths and Physics, in which my Master's project used the fully kinetic PIC code EPOCH to observe the impacts of simulated Raman scattering on inertial confinement fusion (ICF) implosions.
My DPhil project primarily focuses on auxiliary heating low-convergence ratio ICF targets by crossing relativistic electron beams over the central hotspot. To model this process, I have been working with the Vlasov code VALIS, running high resolution simulations of pre-generated high energy, low density electron beams interacting with a low energy, high density hotspot plasma. These simulations allow us to observe multiple stages of heating, understand the physical processes behind this heating and, ultimately, provide a method to extract the maximum amount of energy from the electron beams.
I have also been looking at utilising stimulated Brillouin scattering for applications in plasma optic devices such as beam combiners.