Chandrashekhar J. Joshi

Chandrashekhar "Chan" Janardan Joshi (1953, India – ), is an American experimental plasma physicist and a pioneer of the Plasma-based particle acceleration techniques. He received the Maxwell prize in plasma physics in 2006 for leadership in plasma-based acceleration techniques.^[1] Chandrashekhar J. Joshi is a Distinguished Professor ^[2] of Electrical Engineering at UCLA. He is also the Director of Center for High Frequency Electronics and heads the Neptune Laboratory for Advanced Accelerator Research at UCLA.

Education

He received his B.Sc. (1974) in nuclear engineering from London University and Ph.D. (1978) in applied physics from Hull University, both in the U.K. Following a two-year stint as a research associate at the National Research Council of Canada, where he worked on laser-plasma interactions, he joined UCLA first as a researcher and since 1988 as a faculty member.

Research

At UCLA, Professor Joshi has built a strong research group that has done pioneering work in the areas of laser-plasma instabilities, plasma-based light sources, laser-fusion and basic plasma experiments. Joshi has made many fundamental contributions to the understanding of extremely nonlinear optical effects in plasmas. Most notable including his first experimental demonstration of four-wave mixing, stimulated raman forward instability, resonant self-focusing, frequency upshifting by ionization fronts and nonlinear coupling between electron-plasma waves. His group is best known, however, for developing the field of plasma based particle accelerators ^[3][4] over the past three decades.

Awards and recognitions

Professor Joshi is a Fellow of the APS, IEEE and Institute of Physics (U.K). He is also the recipient of DPP's Excellence in Plasma Physics Award (1996) ^[5] (awarded jointly with Christopher E. Clayton ^[6] ) and USPAS prize for Achievement in Accelerator Physics and Technology (1997).^[7] He was the APS Centennial Speaker (1999) and a Distinguished Lecturer in Plasma Physics (2001). He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2014.^[8]

• James Clerk Maxwell Prize (2006) citation: "For his insight and leadership in applying plasma concepts to high energy electron and positron acceleration, and for his creative exploration of related aspects of plasma physics."
• USPAS Prize for Achievement in Accelerator Physics and Technology (1997) citation: "For pioneering experiments on high gradient, laser-driven, plasma beat-wave acceleration."
• APS Division of Plasma Physics - John Dawson award for Excellence in Plasma Physics (1996) citation: "For their pioneering experiments in Plasma Based Accelerator Concepts; particularly for their unambiguous experimental demonstration that electrons can be accelerated to relativistic energies by the beating of two laser beams in a plasma with their frequency difference equal to the plasma frequency. "

References

Publications

• C. Joshi, "Plasma Accelerators," (February 2006), 294, pp.40-47
• C Joshi, T. Katsouleas, "Plasma accelerators at the energy frontier and on tabletops", Physics Today 56, No. 6, 47–51 (2003), doi:10.1063/1.1595054.
• Joshi, C. & Malka, V. (2010). "Focus on Laser- and Beam-Driven Plasma Accelerators". New Journal of Physics. 
• C. Joshi, W. B. Mori, T. Katsouleas, J. M. Dawson, J. M. Kindel, D. W. Forslund. Ultrahigh gradient particle acceleration by intense laser-driven plasma density waves. Nature 311, 525–529 (11 October 1984) doi:10.1038/311525a0
• M. Litos et al. (November 5, 2014). "High-efficiency acceleration of an electron beam in a plasma wakefield accelerator". Nature 515 (7525): 92–95. doi:10.1038/nature13882. 
• I. Blumenfeld et al. 2007. Energy doubling of 42 GeV electrons in a metre-scale plasma wakefield accelerator. Nature 445: 741–744 doi:10.1038/nature05538,