Internships

A funded student summer project is available in the high power fibre laser lab at the University of Liverpool. Lasers are vital power sources for future particle accelerators utilising the extremely high accelerating gradients available in laser created plasmas. However, current lasers are inefficient and operate at low repetition rates; the next generation of practical laser powered accelerators will need kHz, high efficiency drivers. This project will use the short pulse fibre laser at the University of Liverpool and take the uJ output pulse energy and amplify it in specially manufactured photonic crystal fibre laser amplifiers (PCFs). The student will work in the laser lab setting up amplification and pulse compression experiments, measuring the energy that can be extracted from the PCF and compare it to predictions from mathematical models of the amplification process. The work is largely experimental but also involve the theory of laser amplification and writing code to solve these equations. This project would suit a student with an interest in lasers, optics, experimental physics or particle accelerators, at the end of their second or third year of a physics undergraduate degree. The placement is funded sufficiently to cover accommodation and a small stipend, and assistance with finding accommodation can be provided if required. The student should have the right to work in the UK. Interested students should contact Dr. Laura Corner (laura.corner@liverpool.ac.uk) for more information.

The plasma source is one of the key components in any plasma-based accelerator. It plays the most important role in determining the quality of the beam from novel plasma accelerators.  Recently, research and development into the discharge-based plasma source have attracted great interest worldwide due to their intrinsic properties. An initiative has been created at the University of Manchester as a partner of the Cockcroft Institute of Accelerator Science and Technology.

Capillary plasma sources can sustain much longer plasmas and hence have a potential for scalability. Moreover, they enable the formation of parabolic plasma channels allowing high-power laser propagation in plasmas for multiple Rayleigh lengths with constant spot size under certain matching conditions. This is crucial, for example, to achieve a reasonable interaction length for laser-driven plasma applications. Before parabolic density correlation occurs in a capillary-based target at a specific time, the transverse plasma profile starts evolving after a slow discharge. Channel formation is achieved through the characterisation of the radial density evolution of the plasma as a function of time and discharge circuit properties. This can be simulated using fluid dynamics codes such as USIM or OpenFoam.

In this project, you will be understanding the underlying physics of existing simulation program, OpenFoam and modelling the dynamics of gas injected into a cylindrical capillary vessel.

Interested students should contact Dr. Oznur Apsimon (oznur.apsimon@manchester.ac.uk) for more information.

Energy-recovery linacs combine characteristics of linear and circular accelerators, minimising energy consumption to provide a more sustainable solution for future particle accelerator projects. In this internship, the intern will develop, document and demonstrate simulations of particle motion in energy recovery linacs, building on existing simulations of cyclotrons developed in Mathematica. The simulations are intended primarily as tools for teaching particle beam dynamics and for outreach, but will also have direct application to research into identifying optimum methods of manipulating the longitudinal phase space distribution of particle bunches in future energy recovery linacs, e.g. for use in future gamma ray sources.

Interested students should contact Dr. Ian Bailey (i.bailey@lancaster.ac.uk ) for more information.

Microwave Amps Ltd are now a subsidiary of Scandinova and plan to increase the RF power levels they can deliver into the 10 kW region by combining several 3 kW solid state power amplifiers (SSPA) together. This will allow usage as a pre-amplifier to higher power klystrons, such as those that may be used for the UK-XFEL. The aim of the project is to develop a 1.3 GHz cavity combiner that takes 4 inputs and produces one higher power output.

Interested students should contact Prof. Graeme Burt (g.burt1@lancaster.ac.uk ) for more information.

A rectangular waveguide with a layer of dielectric material (in our case, fused silica) on its top and bottom walls can support phase velocities below the speed of light. By choosing the right dimensions, we can select the phase velocity to match the velocity of an electron beam and therefore maintain beam-wave interactions as the electrons and pulse co-propagate through the structure. While the metal waveguide can be machined to very high precision, there may be larger errors in the dielectric. In this work, the student will investigate how the performance of a dielectric-lined waveguide might differ from the design specifications by considering the manufacturing tolerances and possible defects.

Interested students should contact Dr. Laurence Nix (l.nix@lancaster.ac.uk ) for more information.