{"id":25250,"date":"2022-02-16T08:52:05","date_gmt":"2022-02-16T13:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/?p=25250"},"modified":"2024-07-08T06:04:25","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T10:04:25","slug":"understanding-the-strongest-electromagnetic-fields-in-the-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/2022\/02\/16\/understanding-the-strongest-electromagnetic-fields-in-the-universe\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding the strongest electromagnetic fields in the universe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A
This simulation shows a plasma wake behind a laser pulse. The plasma behaves like water waves generated behind a boat. In this image, the \u201cwaves\u201d are extremely hot plasma matter, and the \u201cboat\u201d is a short burst of powerful laser light. (Image courtesy of Daniel Seipt.)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Alec Thomas<\/a> is part of the team from the U-M College of Engineering G\u00e9rard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Science that is building the most powerful laser in the U.S.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dubbed \u201cZEUS,\u201d the laser will be 3-petawatts of power. That\u2019s a \u20183\u2019 with 15 zeros. All the power generated in the entire world is 10-terawatts, or 1000 times less than the ZEUS laser. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team\u2019s goal is to use the laser to explore how matter behaves in the most extreme electric and magnetic fields in the universe, and also to generate new sources of radiation beams, which may lead to developments in medicine, materials science, and national security. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn the strong electric fields of a petawatt laser, matter becomes ripped apart into a `plasma,\u2019 which is what the sun is made of. This work involves very complex and nonlinear physical interactions between matter particles and light. We create six-dimensional models of particles to simulate how they might behave in a plasma in the presence of these laser fields to learn how to harness it for new technologies. This requires a lot of compute power,\u201d Thomas said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That compute power comes from Great Lakes<\/a>, the university\u2019s fastest high-performance computing cluster. The team created equations to solve a field of motion for each six-dimensional particle. The equations run on Great Lakes and help Thomas and his team to learn how the particle might behave within a cell. Once the field of motion is understood, solutions can be developed.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOn the computing side, this is a very complex physical interaction. Great Lakes is designed to handle this type of work,\u201d said Brock Palen, director of Advanced Research Computing, a division of Information and Technology Services. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas has signed up for allocations on the Great Lakes HPC cluster and Data Den storage<\/a>. \u201cI just signed up for the no-cost allocations offered by the U-M Research Computing Package. I am planning to use those allocations to explore ideas and concepts in preparation for submitting grant proposals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learn more and sign up for the no cost U-M Research Computing Package (UMRCP)<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prof. Thomas\u2019 work is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alec Thomas is part of the team from the U-M College of Engineering G\u00e9rard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Science that is building the most powerful laser in the U.S. Dubbed \u201cZEUS,\u201d the laser will be 3-petawatts of power. That\u2019s a \u20183\u2019 with 15 zeros. All the power generated in the entire world is 10-terawatts, or 1000 times less than the ZEUS laser.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":25251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_umich_oidc_access":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4],"tags":[254,130,234,962],"class_list":["post-25250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-projects-services","category-features","tag-hpc","tag-research","tag-storage","tag-umrcp"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/PastedGraphic-1.png",2108,1564,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/PastedGraphic-1-400x266.png",400,266,true],"medium":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/PastedGraphic-1-300x223.png",300,223,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/PastedGraphic-1-768x570.png",665,494,true],"large":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/PastedGraphic-1-600x445.png",600,445,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/PastedGraphic-1-1536x1140.png",1536,1140,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/PastedGraphic-1-2048x1519.png",2048,1519,true],"excerpt-thumbnail":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/PastedGraphic-1-200x140.png",200,140,true],"themonic-thumbnail":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/PastedGraphic-1-60x42.png",60,42,true],"ioslider-thumbnail":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/PastedGraphic-1-658x300.png",658,300,true],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/PastedGraphic-1-665x493.png",665,493,true],"400x250-crop":["https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/PastedGraphic-1-400x250.png",400,250,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"D. Stephanie Dascola, Medical School Office of Research","author_link":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/author\/sdascola\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Alec Thomas is part of the team from the U-M College of Engineering G\u00e9rard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Science that is building the most powerful laser in the U.S. Dubbed \u201cZEUS,\u201d the laser will be 3-petawatts of power. That\u2019s a \u20183\u2019 with 15 zeros. All the power generated in the entire world is 10-terawatts,…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25250"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25366,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25250\/revisions\/25366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigan.it.umich.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}