Senior Laser Modeling Physicist

Company Description

Join us and make YOUR mark on the World!

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has turned bold ideas into world‑changing impact advancing science and technology to strengthen U.S. security and promote global stability.

Our mission spans four critical national security areas nuclear deterrence, threat preparedness, energy security, and multi‑domain defense empowering teams to take on the toughest challenges of today and tomorrow. With a culture built on innovation and operational excellence, LLNL is a place where your expertise can make a real impact.

We have an opening for a highly experienced Senior Laser Modeling Physicist to independently guide the development, research, design, analysis, modeling, testing, and fielding of advanced laser technologies and systems. This work will take place within the National Ignition Facility & Photon Science (NIFPS) Directorate, home to the world’s most energetic laser. It is an exciting time to join the team that achieved fusion ignition in December 2022, a historic moment in science, opening up new physics regimes and setting the stage for new fusion energy possibilities.

You will provide technical direction to an interdisciplinary team developing and deploying state‑of‑the‑art high‑intensity, long and short pulse laser systems for the Department of Energy and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Much of the work in this group focuses on designing and modeling novel laser architectures as well as extending the capabilities of the National Ignition Facility (NIF). This position is in the NIFPS Directorate within the Laser Science & Systems Engineering group.

This position will be filled at either level based on knowledge and related experience as assessed by the hiring team. Additional job responsibilities (outlined below) will be assigned if hired at the higher level.

• Provide strategies and direct efforts to interdisciplinary teams that research, design, develop, integrate, and field or enhance advanced, high‑energy laser systems, high‑peak power lasers, and high‑average power laser technologies, incorporating essential new physics models and new technologies to meet priorities of evolving missions.
• Guide systems design and apply system‑level engineering principles to a wide variety of advanced laser design and analysis projects using novel approaches to develop operational, system, and subsystem solutions.
• Collaborate in integrated experiments in the fields of nonlinear optics, long & short pulse, high‑power and high‑energy laser physics, or laser secondary source generation.
• Provide solutions to complex theoretical and numerical systems models needed to corroborate or anticipate experimental results that test advanced, coupled physics and modeling capabilities in collaboration with laboratory scientists and engineers.
• Provide recommendations to leadership and technical team regarding project vision and strategy independently, with minimal supervision, while providing technical and intellectual leadership on research and development projects.
• Prepare and provide technical presentations and publications for internal and external audiences.
• Advise senior management on involved technical strategies.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

• Direct and guide research, design, and enhancement or development of state‑of‑the‑art laser systems including elements that are frequently not well defined and often involve uncertain factors.
• Apply subject matter expertise and leadership in Joule‑class short‑pulse amplification, in hundred‑plus Joule‑class long‑pulse amplification, thermal/birefringence effects, or nonlinear optical effects to further evolve missions.
• Lead and perform highly complex and detailed signal and image analysis of extensive, highly intricate, and integrated laser performance experiments and their corresponding modeling.
• Develop in‑depth and highly complex nonlinear optics models—fiber or free‑space—from theoretical aspect to numerical implementation potentially for massively parallel high‑performance computer systems to explain the detailed and…