Postdoctoral Appointee - Controlling Power Flow to Enable High Energy Density Applications, Onsite
About the role
The Radiation and Fusion Target Design department at Sandia National Laboratories has an opening for a postdoctoral researcher to advance the understanding and modeling of power flow and pulse shaping on the Z facility. The successful candidate will develop and apply physics-based models, including kinetic plasma simulation and reduced order plasma modeling, to understand how pulse shaping affects both fusion target performance and its coupling to the Z accelerator. This researcher will collaborate with other members of the pulsed power sciences center to explore this design space and propose novel fusion experiments for the Z machine.
What Your Job Will Be Like
The successful candidate will partner on the design and analysis of experimental campaigns at Z, develop models for power flow losses considering load inductance history, feed geometry and pulse shaping, represent the research and development in the organization through publications in scientific journals and presentation at conferences, and collaborate as part of an integrated team to plan research into power flow on the Z machine. They will also collaborate to develop and assess layered MagLIF target concepts that exploit tailored pulse shapes and material-dependent response, publish their findings, and interact with the academic community.
Qualifications
- PhD in Physics, Applied Physics, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Astronomy, or a related discipline (PhD must be conferred within five (5) years prior to employment)
- Ability to obtain and maintain a DOE Q security clearance
- Experience in the kinetic simulation of plasmas
- Understanding of pulsed power machine operation
- Experience in the use of computational tools to probe high energy density phenomena
- Excellent communication skills demonstrated at technical conferences