Monika’s big move to ‘The Golden State’

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QUASAR member Monika Yadav has recently moved to Los Angeles, United States of America as part of her PhD project. She is enrolled in a split-site program between the University of Liverpool and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and her project is titled “Betatron radiation from underdense plasma”. She has already spent her first year in Liverpool and she will continue her 2nd and 3rd years in Los Angeles.

While staying in Liverpool, Monika focused on getting a thorough understanding of the problem and the fundamental physics behind it. For that, she performed photon generation simulations and radiation diagnostics using Particle In Cell (PIC) codes such as EPOCH, and QuickPIC.

Now in Los Angeles, she will be leading the experiments for the betatron project at the Particle Beam Physics Laboratory (PBPL), UCLA under the guidance of her supervisor Prof James Rosenzweig. The goal of this research is the development and the physics testing of betatron radiation-based diagnostic systems, particularly a bent-crystal spectrometer. This type of spectrometer is employed for GeV/m -level plasma wakefield acceleration experiments at the FACET-II (Facility for Advanced Accelerator Experimental Tests) at SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center).

Prof Rosenzweig’s group is closely correlated to Monika’s research and she has got a good start thanks to the fruitful discussions with her group mates. In Liverpool she was working only on simulation studies but in UCLA she is actively participating in the experiments which gives her a more realistic approach to her research.

Monika said: “I am looking forward to attending FACET II workshop at SLAC on 29 October -2 November 2019 where I will get a chance to meet other collaborators and researcher in this area, which will give me a wider perspective of this problem. I am also auditing an advanced plasma course at UCLA.

I think the main difference between Liverpool and Los Angeles comes out with the fact that here I have the whole group working with topics interrelated and dependent on each others research topic.

Also, the sun is brighter here as compared to Liverpool. However, I really miss English coffee.”