Niall Cavanagh (He/Him)

 

Current research project

Strong Field Quantum Electrodynamics Experiments at SLAC

Experiments to probe Strong Field QED are in their early years, the first large scale investigation was the E144 experiment in SLAC in 1996, with modern advances in laser technology we are now able to go beyond the perturbative regime studied in E144 and investigate highly nonlinear phenomena such as nonlinear inverse Compton Scattering and Breit Wheeler pair production, where electron positron pairs are created from the collision of photons. My main research is in simulating new experiments at SLAC and using the outcomes to shape the design of a positron detection system which is sensitive on the single particle level and can precisely model the Breit Wheeler process. Other research areas I am involved in include Gamma ray diagnostics for SFQED experiments as well as traditional accelerator experiments and laser driven experiments to probe the high intensity frontier of electron- photon interactions.

Biography

I graduated from Queens University in 2019 with a MSci in Applied Mathematics and Physics, starting my PhD in the Centre for Plasma Physics a few months later. I have been involved in a couple of experimental campaigns at the Gemini Laser facility at RAL as well as a recent commissioning run at ELI-NP to produce high energy wakefield accelerated electrons.

Research interests

• Strong Field Quantum Electrodynamics
• High intensity Laser interactions
• Laser Wakefield Acceleration