Surfin' in Southern California

Over on Quantum Diaries, Dr. Caolionn O'Connell (who has outdone most physicists by not only having a paper in PRL=Physical Review Letters, but having a PRL cover!*) has added to her explanation of what her work on Plasma Wake Field Acceleration is all about, and shows some slides from her paper and thesis presentation. (She's now a PhD and has come (back) to Southern California to start as a postdoc at Caltech.) It is the third part of a series of explanations, and you should read parts one and two first. Plasma Wake Field Acceleration - which has the charged particles being accelerated sort of "surfing" on an electromagnetic wave - may well be the science upon which future particle physics accelerators depend, so keep your eye on Caolionn's work, as we might not get to test string theory (or whatever lies well beyond the Standard Model) without her help. -cvj *In the interests of full disclosure: I don't even have a PRL, much less a diagram of my own on the cover. As you might guess from the length of most of my posts on this blog, it'll probably not happen any time soon because I can never be brief enough to fit a paper within the required four pages....