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About

 

See our summary fact sheet about the consortium: cfheds_fact_sheetf.pdf.

Goals

The goal of the Consortium for High-Energy Density Science (CfHEDS) is to create and sustain a workforce pipeline to NNSA National Laboratories by increasing the number of students interested in science, by developing new scientists, and by building improved scientific educational and research capacity. This will be accomplished at three minority-serving institutions, enabling them to develop scientists who are well prepared to work in the NNSA-critical field of High Energy Density Science (HEDS), in two thrusts. The first thrust consists of education, outreach, and internship programs. We will establish and sustain a pipeline from minority-serving undergraduate institutions, to minority-serving graduate programs, and to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The second thrust focuses on understanding the effects of a dense plasma on bound states, a topic of high impact in HED plasma physics. A theoretical model that transitions matter from a cold, solid state to a HED plasma is sorely lacking and impacts our understanding of energy deposition, equation of state, and ionization balance as matter is heated to the plasma state. Once the HED plasma state is achieved, there remains great uncertainty in determining the number of bound states due to ionization potential depression-IPD. The technical work will create a strong, sustainable technical collaboration between the academic partners and LLNL. It will provide opportunities for students and faculty from these institutions to participate in collaborative research and have access to LLNL’s world-class HED research facilities.

 

CfHEDS is part of the NNSA's Minority-Serving Institution Partnership Program (MSIPP). Other MSIPP projects include:

The latest consortia were announced this fall, bringing the total up to 10.