In a prescient 2003 report by the National Research Council [1], high energy density science was called out as one of the last true scientific frontiers, a field where the pace of discovery would undoubtedly be fast and furious. Fast forward seven years: we’re at the cusp of a landmark achievement of modern science—in a few months, researchers will attempt for the first time to use 192 lasers beams at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to compress a tiny pellet of deuterium and tritium fuel to extreme density (100 times that of lead) and temperature (100 million degrees). If successful, controlled thermonuclear burn “ignition,” getting more energy out than put in, will be realized for the first time in the laboratory. Fusion is the same energy source that fuels the sun; this research could pave the way for the development of true “carbon neutral” energy.
We can go even more extreme: using the ultra-high intensity short-pulse laser at the Los Alamos National Laboratory Trident facility, the speaker and colleagues were able to create even more exotic, relativistic matter in the laboratory, achieving temperatures as high as a trillion degrees [2]. Under these conditions, some of the largest electric and magnetic fields ever measured on Earth are generated, which make beams of charged particles millions of times brighter than conventional accelerators and enable applications ranging from the treatment of tumors to the discovery of illicit nuclear explosives smuggled into our nation’s ports.
Underpinning these discoveries are advances in supercomputing with today’s Petaflop/s platforms, capable of a million billion mathematical operations per second. These new computers require a complete rethinking of how we go about modeling scientific processes. This talk, accessible to a non-technical audience, will highlight these and other exciting developments in high energy density science in which the speaker has had the good fortunate to participate.

This work was performed under the auspices of the U. S. Dept. of Energy by the Los Alamos National Security, LLC Los Alamos National Laboratory.
[1] Frontiers in high energy density physics: the x-games of contemporary science, The National Research Council (U.S.). Committee on High Energy Density Plasma Physics; (National Academies Press; Washington DC; 2003); ISBN-10: 0-309-08637-X.
[2] B. M. Hegelich, L. Yin, B. J. Albright et al., “Toward GeV laser-driven Ions: Ion Acceleration in the Break-Out Afterburner Regime,” submitted to Science.

The lessons that Drake taught me have guided me through graduate school at the University of Iowa, 5 years of postdoctoral research in the Chicagoland area, and recently to the Northern Illinois University Department of Psychology. In my current faculty position, I participate in education, research, and scientific outreach in a dynamic and flexible work environment. I will discuss briefly my work involving animal models to understand issues relating to stress, emotion, heart disease, and social behavior.