ASLMS 2024 Keynote Speaker
Mordecai D. ("Mordy") Rosen, PhD
Mordecai D. (“Mordy”) Rosen was raised in Brooklyn, NY. He received his BSc from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and his PhD in Plasma Physics from Princeton University. In 1976 he joined the Laser Fusion effort at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), where he specialized in the physics of a laser heated gold cylinder (a "hohlraum") that surrounds the implosion capsule. He designed and analyzed the first few generations of High Energy Density Physics (HEDP) experiments that used these hohlraums in a wide variety of ways. This field keeps growing larger to this day. In 1984 he designed the first successful laboratory x-ray laser, a world-wide 25-year quest. In the 1990’s he led the target design & theory efforts, whose work on LLNL's Nova laser led to the approval to build the 50x larger National Ignition Facility (NIF).
Since then, his work has led to more efficient hohlraums, a key development in allowing ignition to finally be achieved in 2022. He has chaired the internal review of the ignition program, as well as the Peer Review Panel that reviews all proposed shots on NIF. He also serves on the "Discovery Science on NIF" panel, that selects proposals from all over the world.
He has twice won the American Physical Society (APS) Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research, in 1990 for x-ray lasing, and in 2022 for the team achieving a burning plasma. In addition, he won the American Nuclear Society Teller Award for his role in establishing the field of HEDP, and is a Fellow of the APS. He has won the Department of Energy Award of Excellence 8 times, was named LLNL’s first Teller Fellow in 2000 and its first Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff in 2011. He has taught Fusion Plasmas at UC Davis and UC Berkeley, and in numerous Summer School Programs across the globe.
Don't miss his talk, "Igniting a Star With the World’s Largest Laser, a History-Making Achievement," during the Thursday plenary session at ASLMS 2024.
Plenary | Thursday, April 11, 2024 | 8:00 AM – 8:45 AM EDT
Presentation Title: Igniting a Star With the World’s Largest Laser, a History-Making Achievement
Presentation Summary: On December 5, 2022, a spherical capsule, containing fusion fuel of heavy hydrogen, was imploded to high density and temperature. It then ignited, producing, for the first time in history, more fusion energy than the laser energy driving it. That laser, the world's largest, is the National Ignition Facility [NIF] at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California. It illuminated the interior of a cylinder of gold encompassing that capsule, and in so doing, created a 3-million-degree x-ray oven that drove the capsule implosion. Upon implosion the fuel reached a temperature of 100 million degrees, exceeding the temperature at the center of our Sun by a factor of ~ ten. In this talk we briefly describe how all this was done, and its implications for a possible future of carbon-free, inherently safe, fusion energy production.