CER Spotlight: Simon Bott-Suzuki

Principal Investigator, Pulsed Power Plasmas Group

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Official Interview:

That relatively small laboratory experiments can give us insight into how stars are born, live and die. We can make jets of plasma similar to those we see from accretions disks where stars are forming. Studying these jets may give us clues as to how a spinning disk becomes a much more slowly rotating star, and how the magnetic field of the star develops. Some stars end their lives in a supernova explosion, and the study of shocks in plasmas can help understand how the explosion moves through and interacts with the surrounding area. Finally of course we study fusion, the process powering all stars, as a source of energy.

What is a typical day at work like?
One of things I enjoy about my job is that every day is different. Things do get very busy, hectic, or frustrating at various times, but it’s never dull. I’ve just finished teaching for the quarter, so at the moment I’m moving from lectures and office hours back to lab work, calculations and data analysis. At various times throughout the year grant writing or conference preparation takes priority, but much of the time is spent thinking about the experiments we carry out in the lab at UCSD, along with those we’re involved with through our collaborations. We look to design new, interesting experiments which can investigate new aspects of the plasma system we use, either through ‘pen-and-paper’ calculations or computer simulations. The projects we work on are 3-5 years long with specified milestones, but the individual challenges change all the time as these projects move forward, often throwing up something entirely unexpected.

Tell us a bit about your path to get to your current position?
I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Sheffield in the UK. It was during a summer project with a professor there that I first came across plasma research. A laser spectroscopy method was being used to analyze the rotation and vibration modes in nitrogen plasma lamps, which leads to a measure of the temperature inside the lamp in a very localized region. This ability to analyze intimate details of a gas molecule, and to map these details in 3D through a working lamp was fascinating. After a successful and very enjoyable summer I accepted a graduate position, and my Ph.D. focus was to non-invasively diagnose electron emission variability as deuterium plasma lamps aged. The range of techniques allowed me to tackle problems from different angles and we successfully identified a key issue, improving lamp behavior substantially for our commercial sponsor.

My range of expertise in plasma diagnosis led to a post-doctoral position at Imperial College London. Whilst the research was still plasma science, the focus was in fusion energy and space plasmas. This really opened my eyes to the huge range of possibilities for plasmas, I was fascinated to see how experiments could be redesigned to tackle new problems.

After 4 years in London, I was offered a position at UC San Diego, as a Project Scientist in CER and I’ve been here for a little over 8 years now. Prof Farhat Beg’s group was utilizing compact pulsed power devices to drive hot, dense plasmas. We successfully investigated a wide range of exploding fine wire experiments, and made significant strides forward in many of these areas. We installed a new compact pulsed power device and were the first university researchers to use this for wire experiments. We also extended the scaling of many systems to new current levels and materials to enhance the knowledge available in our research area.

A few years ago, I started my own group to investigate what other problems the plasmas generated by pulsed power devices could help solve. My main areas of interest remain fusion energy and space plasmas. Given there is so much of the plasma world and universe to be explored, there remains many areas in which novel, well-though out experiments can help advance our knowledge.