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Lucile VAN BOX SOM

Scientist

Centrale-Supélec and EPFL (Switzerland) engineer, graduate in 2015, I did my PhD at the observatoire de Paris and at CEA. Since 2018, I am a researcher at CEA. My research work focuses on the numerical simulations of the radiation hydrodynamics phenomena in astrophysics and in high energy density physics, and on the scaling and the similarity theory. Thanks to the development of powerful lasers, it is now possible to study in laboratory many physical processes, in particular those found in astrophysics. The experimental approach brings new insights to complete the observational data. These latter are often difficult to obtain in order to constrain the theoretical modelling. Some phenomena have remarkable properties allowing us to build millimeter-sized models. These latter are used to study the evolution of the radiation plasmas in a controlled environment and observed by numerous diagnostics. By focusing the laser energy for a billionth of a second on a surface of a few square millimeters, it is possible to reproduce, in laboratory, the extreme conditions of matter necessary to approach the astrophysical regime. Thus, laboratory astrophysics is a unique opportunity to probe unobservable regions with telescopes and thus respond to astrophysical issues. Part of my projects therefore consists of designing and interpreting laboratory experiments on powerful lasers such as the Laser Megajoule (LMJ) in France. I am currently supervising a master thesis and a PhD thesis on accretion phenomena around magnetic white dwarfs and neutron stars in the context of laboratory astrophysics.