EARLY ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
FARHAT BEG

Farhat Beg is currently an Associate Professor of Engineering Science at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, San Diego and a visiting Professor at Imperial College, London. He received his Ph. D. from Imperial College, London in 1995 and was a post-doctoral fellow there before joining UCSD in 2003. He has been working on various issues of high energy density physics including short pulse laser matter interactions, fast ignition and pulsed power driven Z-pinches (X-pinches, wire arrays and pulsed neutron sources). He was the first to present an empirical scaling (known as “Beg’s scaling”) of hot electron temperature with the laser intensity in short pulse laser matter interactions. He has been instrumental in proposing innovative ideas; his idea of producing a Z-pinch with a high-intensity-short-pulse laser has generated considerable interest in the community. He showed that a superfast Z-pinch can be created by a return current produced in response to escaping fast electrons in short pulse laser interaction with wire targets. He also demonstrated that a single capacitor based plasma focus could be used as a neutron source to calibrate dark matter detectors. His work on single wire Z-pinches contributed significantly to the understanding of single wire pinch dynamics. In recent experiments, Dr. Beg demonstrated the use of compact X-pinch (with floor space < 1m2) as a point x-ray source for characterization of inertial confinement fusion capsules. He has published over 80 articles in refereed journals on various topics of high energy density physics including fast ignition, relativistic laser matter interactions, wire array Z-pinches, x-pinches and x-ray and neutron sources. He is the general chair of the IEEE NPSS International Conference on Plasma Science (ICOPS) to be held in June 2009 in San Diego.

Citation: For contributions to the understanding of electron transport in short pulse high intensity laser matter interactions and the physics of pulsed power driven z-pinches.

Farhat Beg can be reached at Dept of Mechanical and Aerospace Enineeringg, UCSD, 9500 Gilman Dr, La Jolla, CA 92093-5004; Phone: +1 858 822 1266; Fax: +1 858 534 4543; E-mail: fbeg@ucsd.edu.