News

November 2025
Duarte Faustino awarded with a New Talents Gulbenkian scholarship.
P2-team member Duarte Faustino, and a 1st year student of the MSc in Engineering Physics at IST was awarded with the Gulbenkian New Talents Scholarship awarded by the Gulbenkian Foundation for outstanding university students. Many congratulations to Duarte!
October 2025
Bernardo Malaca wins Best PhD thesis award.
Former P2-team member Bernardo Malaca, now HPC SysAdmin at Centro Nacional de Computação Avançada (Portugal), has received the award for the Best PhD Thesis in Optics and Photonics in Portugal, 2024, sponsored by the Portuguese Society for Optics and Photonics – SPOF. The thesis, entitled “Superradiant and coherent radiation emission in plasma accelerator light sources” was supervised by Jorge Vieira and Ricardo Fonseca. In his thesis, Bernardo pioneered a light source concept that leverages collective effects to unlock superradiance and coherent emission in plasma-based accelerators. This work was was published in Nature Photonics. Congratulations Bernardo!
October 2025
Camilla Willim defended her PhD thesis.
P2-team member Camilla Willim defended her PhD thesis entitled Structured laser-plasma interactions at ultra-high intensities. The thesis was co-supervised by Prof. Luís Silva. The juri of her thesis included Prof. Marija Vranic (IST), Prof. John Palastro (University of Rochester and Laboratory for Laser Energetics) and Prof. João Jorge Santos (University of Bordeaux). Many congratulations to Camilla!

(left) From left to right - Frederico Fiuza; Marija Vranic; Camilla Willim, Jorge Vieira, John Palastro, João Santos. (right) Camilla with her PhD hat.
July 2025
Dr. Raoul Trines (RAL/STFC) visited our team and GoLP .
Our team and GoLP hosted the visit of Dr. Raoul Trines between 16-17 July. In addition to several discussions, Raoul delivered a GoLP-VIP Seminar entitled “Laser high-harmonic generation in plasma:the new beat wave” where he shared some of hist recent exciting theoretical approach to high harmonics generation.
July 2025
Our team hosted the EuPRAXIA-DN Training Camp II Science between 13-15 July at IST.
The second EuPRAXIA-Doctoral Network training camp was held at IST during July 13-15 2025. The camp included talks on advanced accelerator technologies, and discussed next-generation light sources. The camp also included talks by EuPRAXIA-DN fellow and P2-team member BT (nonlinear Thomson scattering), by CB (muon acceleration using laser pulses with a flying focus), RA (Thomson scattering using structured light), and a poster by CW (magnetic field generation and photon deceleration from azimuthally polarised beams) and XW (Zernike polynomial mode expansion in PIC codes). GoLP members RF, MV, and DL gave talks about HPC for plasma accelerators, direct laser acceleration, and machine-learning optimized laser plasma accelerators. Our collaborator Marco Piccardo also presented a talk on meta-surfaces for structured light.

EuPRAXIA-DN Camp II Science group photo.
May 2025
Our structured-light review paper is out on Optica.
P2 team member JV is a co-author of a review article about structured light in laser-plasma interactions at ultra-high intensity, and its various applications from plasma-based accelerators, their light sources and magnetic field generation to strong field quantum-electro-dynamics (QED).

Construction of an OAM beam from a minimalistic definition of structured light. (a) Interference of three plane waves with differ- ent k wave vectors and phases leading to a lattice with a vortex phase. (b) Extension to the case of 20 plane waves, resulting in a well-defined donut beam carrying OAM. Taken from our paper here.
May 2025
Jorge Vieira gave a Seminar at the Center of Physics and Engineering of Advanced Materials (CeFEMA).
The talk was an overview of plasma-based accelerators and their light sources, the challenges for high energy physics, and also new oportunities using structured light pulses (e.g., with orbital angular momentum and with a flying focus), and our recent work on radiation from quasiparticles.
May 2025
Our paper on propagation-invariant optical pulses is out on Optics Letters.
Propagation-invariant optical pulses have a peak intensity that travels at an arbitrary, tunable velocity while maintaining their spatiotemporal profile. We have shown that their structure is universal, thereby combining a plethora of previously disconnected descriptions. These pulses may be used in processes where phase-locking and an accurate control of the velocity of radiation intensity is key.

Even though the whole envelope of the electromagnetic field travels at c, the focus, i.e., the peak intensity moves at a constant velocity v_f that can be arbitrarily chosen.
May 2025
Jorge Vieira gave a Seminar at the EuPRAXIA Virtual Seminar Series.
The seminar focused on the recent quasiparticle light source concept (which may bring temporal coherence and superradiance to plasma accelerator-based light sources). This was the first seminar of the EuPRAXIA Virtual Seminar Series and is available on youtube
March 2025
Mariana Moreira recieved the John Dawson best PhD thesis award.
Mariana Moreira, who did her PhD thesis at our team, received the John Dawson best PhD thesis award at the Laser Plasma Accelerator Workshop 2025. Congratulations Mariana!

(left to right) Carolina, Jorge, Mariana, Ricardo, Rafael, Chiara, Bhushan, Edda
March 2025
Bhushan Thakhur is on a leave at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory!
Bhushan Thakhur is on a leave at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory!
January 2025
Our paper on proton acceleration using azimuthal pulses is out JPP
Our paper on proton acceleration using azimuthal pulses is out JPP