Thomas WL Sanford

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Thomas WL “Tom” Sanford (* around 1945 ) is an American physicist.

Sanford studied mathematics and physics at the University of Washington , with a bachelor's degree magna cum laude in 1965 and at Columbia University , where he made his master's degree in physics in 1967 and received his doctorate in 1973 with Leon Max Lederman . He then worked at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Great Britain (with TG Walker ), at CERN and the Brookhaven National Laboratory (with Samuel CC Ting ). From 1982 he was a member of Sandia National Laboratories , where he was involved in the development of the Hermes III (High Energy Radiation Megavolt Electron Source) electron accelerator, which is used in pulsed operation to generate X-rays and gamma rays to simulate the effects of nuclear explosions. In 1991 he became a Distinguished Member of the laboratory.

Sanford developed the Z-pinch with wire arrangements, which had previously been successfully tested in Russia by Valentin Smirnow , through the Saturn experiment to the Z-machine , the most powerful X-ray source in the mid-2000s (around 2005 2 MJ in 6 ns, accordingly 200 TW), which also generated record temperatures of 2 to 3 billion Kelvin for a short time. Two cylindrical shells of wire assemblies, through which a high current (20 mega amps) is sent, implode onto a central target where high-intensity X-rays are generated for inertial fusion experiments or other studies (dynamic cavity).

In 2005 he received the Hannes Alfvén Prize with Malcolm Haines and Vladimir Smirnov . Since 2000 he has been a Fellow of the American Physical Society .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hermes III . One 0.7 mega amp , 20 mega eV
  2. ↑ World of Physics: Heat record in the laboratory - why it gets so hot in the plasma and effectively emits X-rays , 2006.
personal data
SURNAME Sanford, Thomas WL
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sanford, Tom
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist
DATE OF BIRTH around 1945