The HEDS Center at LLNL participates in a range of outreach efforts to the university community, including the organization of conferences and workshops in topical areas of common interest to the HED science community.
Examples of events the center has helped organize or sponsor include:
- A nuclear processes in dense plasmas workshop held July 30–August 1, 2018, at LLNL to bring together the nuclear and HEDS communities to discuss important nuclear physics questions that currently are unanswered and the HEDS platforms and diagnostics that could potentially provide insight into those questions.
- A transport code comparison workshop held on October 24–26, 2016, at Sandia National Laboratories that discussed code comparisons of coefficients commonly implemented in hydrodynamic simulations and established the present state of theoretical approaches that provide tabular transport data for hydrodynamics codes.
- The 2016 High Pressure Gordon Research Conference on "Emergent Properties at High Material Densities," held in Holderness, NH on July 17–22, 2016.
- A kinetic physics workshop held at LLNL on April 5–7, 2016, that brought together more than 100 academic and laboratory researchers from around the world.
Institute for Laser Science Applications Workshops
LLNL's Institute for Laser Science Applications (ILSA) was the preceding LLNL institute to the HEDS Center, and was incorporated into the Center in 2015. ILSA sponsored or co-sponsored multiple workshops and other events from 2003 through 2015, including the events described below.
ILSA was one of the co-sponsors of the 5th International Conference on High Energy Density Physics, ICHED (August 23–27, 2015, San Diego, California). The ICHED conference topics range from Material Science and Planetary Physics to Laser Plasma Physics including Diagnostics for HED. Many of the students and researchers interested in HEDS research opportunities were also involved in the HEDP Summer School that took place on the campus of UC San Diego during the week (August 17–21, 2015) prior to ICHED.
ILSA was one of the co-sponsors of the 2013 HED Physics (HEDP) Summer School, organized by the University of Rochester Fusion Science Center, with co-sponsorship from LLNL's ILSA and General Atomics. The summer school was held at the Ohio State University, July 14–20, 2013. The school targets undergraduate seniors, graduate students, postdocs, and researchers who wish to enter, or advance their knowledge, in HEDP and ICF research. Lecture topics include radiation transport and spectroscopy, hydrodynamics, laser–plasma interactions, and experiment diagnostics, along with other ongoing research activities in the area of HEDP.
ILSA was one of the co-sponsors of the Fast Ignition of Fusion Targets Workshop 2012. This international workshop, held every two years, brings together the leading international researchers in the field of fast ignition inertial confinement fusion (ICF). The 2012 Workshop took place November 4–8, 2012 at the Napa Marriott Hotel in Napa, CA.
The 2011 HED Physics Summer School, organized by the UR Fusion Science Center, with co-sponsorship from ILSA and General Atomics, was held July 10–16, 2011 at the UC San Diego campus in California. Lecture topics included radiation transport and spectroscopy, hydrodynamics, laser–plasma interactions, and experiment diagnostics, along with other ongoing research activities in the area of HED physics.
ILSA and NIF were the local hosts of the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Fusion Science Center that took place August 4–6, 2010, at LLNL. The first day of the meeting was to be a review of recent research accomplishments within the FSC (including fast ignition, shock ignition, and magnetized HED laser–plasma). The second and third days focused on the topic of electron divergence. Everyone was required to register to provide information on the number of participants at the meeting that ended up totaling over 60.
ILSA was one of the co-sponsors of the Student and Post-Doctoral HEDP Workshop that took place June 28–30, 2010 on the UC San Diego campus. The goals of the workshop were to exchange ideas on the current status of High Energy Density Physics, identify future directions, and encourage students and post-docs to discuss their research. As its main focus, the workshop evaluated the current status of HEDP and promoted collaboration between university campuses. In addition to the several LLNL scientists who presented oral review talks, there were LLNL graduate students and postdocs who presented poster papers on their current research.
ILSA was one of three co-sponsors of the Antimatter Creation Using Intense Lasers Workshop that was held on April 27–28, 2010 in Berkeley, CA. The goals of the workshop were to assess the status of laser-based positron generation within the context of current positron research and applications and to define future research directions for laser-based positron generation and antimatter science. To achieve these goals, the workshop surveyed several scientific communities that deal with positrons, such as astrophysics, positronium physics, and positron sources in accelerators. The workshop also included overviews of basic theories and experiments of laser antimatter generation, such as vacuum pair production, electron–positron plasma generation, and creation of other short-lived antimatter particles such as antimuons and antiprotons.
A meeting of the NIF/Jupiter User Group was held September 6, 2009, at the Hotel Intercontinental in San Francisco, immediately preceding the Inertial Fusion Sciences and Applications (IFSA) Conference to provide further information regarding scientific opportunities at NIF and Jupiter.
The 2009 HEDP Summer School at the University of Rochester, organized by the Fusion Science Center, with co-sponsorship from LLNL's Institute for Laser Science & Applications, the University of California's Berkeley Institute for Material Dynamics under Extreme Conditions, and General Atomics, was held at the University of California, Los Angeles, on July 26–August 1, 2009.
The 2009 HEDP Summer School at UC San Diego was modeled after the successful 2007 and 2005 HEDP Summer Schools in which ILSA was a co-sponsor along with the Fusion Science Center.
ILSA and the Heavy Ion Fusion Science Virtual National Laboratory co-sponsored a Workshop on Accelerator-Driven Warm-Dense-Matter Physics from February 22–24, 2006, in Pleasanton, CA. The purpose of this workshop was to gather researchers on warm dense matter (WDM) and accelerator physics to explore the open questions in the growing and exciting field of WDM, and to explore how heating methods based on particle beams can best contribute to WDM science.
The 2005 HEDP Summer School, organized by the Fusion Science Center at the University of Rochester and ILSA was held August 7–13, 2005, at the Clark Kerr Campus of the University of California, Berkeley.
The 2004 International Conference on Ultrahigh Intensity Lasers was held in North Lake Tahoe, California on October 3–7, 2004. The ICUIL conference was organized by the International Committee on Ultrahigh Intensity Lasers and sponsored by LLNL with support from NIF, ILSA, and LaserNetEurope.
In 2004, ILSA, LLNL's Institute for Scientific Computing, and UCLA organized a Short-Pulse Laser Matter workshop. The workshop was centered on the computational and theoretical aspects of short-pulse laser–plasma interactions.
