Monika Yadav successfully defends PhD thesis
QUASAR Group member and LIV.DAT student Monika Yadav has defended her thesis and successfully completed her Ph.D. thesis on ‘Modelling betatron radiation for diagnostics at FACET-II using machine learning algorithms’. She was awarded a Ph.D. degree on 9th May 2023.
Monika’s work focused on new numerical methods, spectrometer hardware designs, and beam parameter and spectrum reconstruction methods for betatron radiation. A photon spectrometer was built at FACET-II to measure betatron radiation. Measuring the beam’s emitted betatron radiation can be valuable in studying the matching dynamics. This spectrometer will detect high-energy photons from Compton scattering and pair production methods. In both cases, the performance of maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), neural networks, and a hybrid approach combining the two are compared.
Collaborating with physicists and experts from Liverpool University, Daresbury Laboratory, the QUASAR Group, and UCLA, the work was applied to FACET-II. Monika worked closely with supervisors Prof. Carsten Welsch and Dr. Oznur Apsimon during her Ph.D., approaching the work via a number of diverse methods.
Monika started her post-doctoral studies at UCLA with PBPL lab. Her research activities will involve the NSF CBB for studies on the ultra-compact XFEL at the UCLA SAMURAI Lab at UCLA and Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. At Stanford, she will be working on the implementation, commissioning, and physics analysis of the advanced gamma-ray measurement systems at the FACET-II wakefield accelerator research facility. This will also require research at UCLA on computational modelling and preparatory experimental work.
Congratulations Monika!
Dr Monika Yadav