Scott Wilks

Dr. Wilks received his B.A. degree in physics from U.C. Berkeley and his PhD. in plasma physics from U.C.L.A. in 1989 under the supervision of John Dawson. Since then, he has been a research scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. His area of expertise is the application of computer simulation to the design and analysis of high intensity laser matter experiments. His work on applying Particle-In-Cell simulations to ultra-intense laser solid density plasma interactions led to several theoretical predictions about the interactions which were subsequently verified in experiment: namely, the ponderomotive scaling of hot electron temperatures, the presence of hundreds of megaGauss magnetic fields and hole boring of the laser pulse, and This work played a key role in the early development of the fast ignitor concept for which he and others were awarded the APS 2006 John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research Award. Later he contributed to the development of a physical picture of a laser-based ion acceleration method dubbed Target Normal Sheath Acceleration (TNSA). He is a Fellow and lifetime member of the American Physical Society.

LaserNetUS Affiliations:

• Chair, SimNet Simulation committee for laserNetUS-        

Featured Publications:

1. Generating keV ion distributions for nuclear reactions at near solid-density using intense short-pulse lasers

A. Kemp, S. C. Wilks, E. Hartouni, G. Grim., Nature Communications. 10. 10.1038/s41467-019-12076-x. (2019)

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12076-x

2. Relativistic Positron Creation Using Ultra-intense Short Pulse Lasers beams at the National Ignition Facility

H. Chen, S. C. Wilks, J. D. Bonlie, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 102, 105001 (2009)

3. Energetic proton generation in ultra intense laser–solid interactions

S. C. Wilks, A. B. Langdon, T. E. Cowan, et al., Physics of Plasmas, 8, 542 (2001).

4. Absorption of Ultra--Intense Laser Pulses

S. C. Wilks, W.L. Kruer, M. Tabak, and A.B. Langdon., Phys. Rev. Lett., 69, 1383, (1992)