Prize Recipient

Simon Hooker
Oxford University

Citation:

"For experiments and theory leading to the demonstration of high-quality electron beams from laser-plasma accelerators."

Background:

Simon Hooker was awarded undergraduate and D.Phil degrees in Physics by the University of Oxford in 1986 and 1990 respectively. Following post-doctoral work with Colin Webb at Oxford, and Steve Harris at Stanford University, he returned to the UK in 1996 to take up a Royal Society University Research Fellowship. He joined the faculty at Oxford in 2005 and was made Professor of Atomic and Laser Physics in 2008. He is a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford where he directs undergraduate teaching in Physics. The general area of Simon Hooker's research is the investigation of applications arising from the interaction of high-intensity laser pulses with matter. He and his group have worked on development of bright sources of coherent short-wavelength radiation, such as optical field ionization lasers and quasi-phase-matched high-harmonic generation; the development and application of techniques for guiding high-intensity laser pulses, in particular plasma channels formed by capillary discharges; and laser-driven plasma accelerators and their application to radiation generation. He has also co-authored a textbook on Laser Physics, published by Oxford University Press. Simon Hooker is a member of the Institute of Physics and of the Optical Society of America. 

Selection Committee:

Amitava Bhattacharjee, Chair; Richard Berger; Yitzhak Maron; Michael Mauel; Cliff Surko