The damage and erosion of plasma-facing components (PFCs) due to extremely high heat loads and particle bombardment is a key issue for the nuclear fusion community. Currently high current ion and electron beams are used in laboratories for simulating the behaviour of PFC materials under ITER-like conditions. Our results indicate that high-power nanosecond lasers can be used for laboratory simul...

Together with my partner, Pablo Solis, we demonstrate the particle-like nature of light as characterized by photons with quantized and distinct energies each dependent only on its frequency (ν) and scaled by Planck’s constant (h). Using data obtained through the bombardment of an alkali metal surface (in our case, potassium) by light of varying frequencies, we calculate Planck’s constant, h to ...

Gamma ray emission lines resulting from accelerated particle bombardment of ambient gas can serve as an important spectroscopic tool for abundance determinations. The method is illustrated by considering the gamma ray line emission observed from solar flares. The observation of similar gamma ray lines from Orion suggests the existence of large fluxes of low energy Galactic cosmic rays. The role...