Group of Lasers and Plasmas

#3 with Cláudia Romão 👕

📸 We continue spotting our colleagues during the summer break. This time all the way to Rome 🏛️ 🍕 🍝

''si Romæ fueris, romano vivito more'' - When in Rome, do as the Romans do 🇮🇹

At GoLP we say continuously raising the bar.

#2 — Diogo Lemos bringing GoLP from the Cathar Pyrenees to Figueres 👕

We’re still catching teammates off-site, enjoying the season. 📸

Cheers to science and sunny days. 🌞

Opening the doors of research to science journalism

From October 2026, Colombian science journalist🗞️ Stefany Hernández will join the Group of Lasers and Plasmas (GoLP) at IPFN for a five-month residency under the FRONTIERS Science Journalism in Residency Programme.

🧠 💡 Science is much more than published results. It is long simulations, challenging experiments, unexpected setbacks, and the determination to answer some of the most fundamental questions about our Universe.🌠 🌌

Through her project, Taming the Light, Stefany will follow researchers working on plasma physics, high-intensity lasers, and nuclear fusion, offering an inside look 🔎 at the science and the people striving to understand how stars shine 💫 —and how that same process could one day provide a source of clean energy on Earth. 🌍️⚡

The residency is an opportunity to share the reality of research beyond scientific papers and to bring the public closer to the fascinating world of plasmas, lasers, and fusion energy.

Stay tuned for stories from inside the lab. ⭐⚡



Photo by Instituto Superior Técnico

Instituto Superior Técnico
IPFN - Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear

🚀 Exciting news!

We are delighted to announce our participation in PAIR (Plasma Antimatter Investigation and Realisation), a groundbreaking project funded by the European Union's Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Staff Exchanges programme under Horizon Europe.🤝

This marks the first time GoLP has secured funding through this prestigious MSCA Staff Exchanges scheme, an important milestone that recognizes our growing contribution to international research and innovation.🎉

The PAIR project will bring together leading researchers from Europe and the United States to investigate one of the most fascinating phenomena in physics: electron-positron plasmas, a rare form of matter linked to some of the most extreme environments in the universe, including pulsars and black holes.💥

Over the next four years, the consortium will combine advanced experiments, artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, and international staff exchanges to create a new European capability for pair-plasma science.

We are excited to contribute to this pioneering initiative and to strengthen international collaboration, innovation, and researcher development. 🤝

Learn more about the project: https://tinyurl.com/4y4br96x

With University of Oxford, Max-Planck-Institut, Sorbonne University, UCLA, U. Rochester, ColibriTD and CERFACS.



Instituto Superior Técnico
IPFN - Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear

☀️ This summer, we're spotting members of our team outside the office, enjoying the season.📸

From beaches 🏖️ to city breaks 🌆 , hiking trails 🥾 , our team is taking a little piece of research wherever they go.

Our team t-shirt has become part of the gear—alongside curiosity, collaboration, and a passion for discovery. 👕

#1 with Rafael Almeida Nova de Milfontes, Portugal

Here's to science and sunny days. 🌞

🏆️ Pablo Bilbao, who completed his PhD 🎓️ in Physics at Instituto Superior Técnico | GoLP, was presented with the EPS Plasma Physics Division PhD Research Award at the EPS Plasma Physics Conference 2026.

Pablo's dissertation 🎓️ , "Kinetic Instabilities in Extreme Plasma Physics: Laboratory and Astrophysical Dynamics" was selected among the four most outstanding 💡 doctoral works from 38 EPS member countries.

“Receiving the EPS Plasma Physics Division PhD Research Award 2025 is a great honour and a very significant recognition of the work carried out throughout my PhD.” Congratulations. 👏

Instituto Superior Técnico

IPFN - Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear




Read more:
https://tecnico.ulisboa.pt/en/news/campus-community/tecnico-phd-student-awarded-european-award/ https://www.publico.pt/2026/03/26/ciencia/noticia/cientista-tecnico-distinguido-premio-sociedade-europeia-fisica-2169040

A quick look back at the past few weeks 👀

If we've been a little quieter than usual, it's for a good reason.
The past few weeks have been packed with initiatives that have kept us fully engaged behind the scenes.

Here's a glimpse of what we've been up to lately.

✅ José Luís Figueiredo defended his PhD Thesis! Congratulations, José👏 🎓️
✅ GoLP members present in the kick off meeting of COST EXPAND
✅ Weekly seminars by Bernardo Barbosa, Gonçalo Figueira, Rafael Almeida, Óscar Amaro
✅ The 'graduation pen cerimony' of Chiara Badiali
✅ Hugo Terças, Bernardo Barbosa and Lucas Ansia at the 52nd EPS meeting in Edimburgh





Instituto Superior Técnico
IPFN - Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear

GoLP's work is featured in jornal Público — it highlights collaborative efforts at CERN with Carolina Amoedo, Nelson Lopes and Luís Oliveira e Silva for the AWAKE collaboration and the ☄️ Fireball experiment: https://www.publico.pt/2026/06/01/ciencia/depoimento/cientista-ilha-precisa-comunidade-2173809



Instituto Superior Técnico
IPFN - Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear

Nenhum cientista é uma ilha, precisa de comunidade Como trabalham os cientistas em equipa? Como nascem as ideias, como se tratam os dados, como se decidem que é o autor? Conversámos com Guilherme Milhano, que trabalha em física de partículas.

🎓✨ Big congratulations to Dr. Chiara Badiali! ✨🎓

Chiara has successfully defended her PhD with Distinction and Honour — what an incredible achievement! 👏

Her research explored advanced approaches to plasma acceleration, contributing valuable insights to the field of high-energy physics.

"I am incredibly happy to have successfully defended my PhD.

I am deeply grateful to my supervisors, Thales Silva and Jorge Vieira, for their guidance, support, and encouragement throughout this journey. I would also like to thank Patric Muggli for his mentorship both during my time with the AWAKE experiment at CERN and beyond.

Finally, I am immensely thankful to all members of the GoLP group for their support, collaboration, and friendship over the years. This achievement would not have been possible without them."

We wish Chiara all the best for the future — this is just the beginning of an exciting journey! 🚀

://www.facebook.com/tecnico.ulisboa.pt

IPFN - Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear

In last week's seminar Hugo Pires presented results on Interface and surface characterization via SHG:

🔬 Exploring silicon surfaces with light

How can we “see” what’s happening at the very surface of a material 🧐? One powerful method is second-harmonic generation (SHG)—a nonlinear optical technique sensitive to interfaces.

In their latest work, Pires et al discovered something new: a previously unreported higher-order nonlinear contribution emerging at silicon (Si(111)–SiO₂) interfaces.

✨ The SHG signal doesn’t just scale normally—it shows both quadratic and quartic behavior, with the quartic part revealing a unique threefold symmetry 🪞 pattern layered on top of the usual sixfold structure.

This opens the door🚪 to new ways of probing and understanding semiconductor surfaces, which are essential in modern electronics and photonics 💡


IPFN - Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear
Instituto Superior Técnico