Professional Background

Mark Sherlock obtained his PhD in ion kinetic effects in z-pinch plasmas and then became a postdoctoral fellow at Imperial College London from 2004 to 2006, where he worked on the development of a Vlasov-Fokker-Planck model for laser-plasma interactions. In 2007 he joined the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory as a Theoretical Plasma Physicist, where he worked until 2009. At RAL he supported high intensity laser experiments and developed several computational models (3D MHD, ion kinetics, hybrid electron transport) for studying laser-plasma interactions. In 2009 he returned to Imperial College as a postdoctoral fellow, working on the development of 3D MHD models and Particle-In-Cell models for short-pulse laser-plasma interactions. In 2016 he became a staff scientist at LLNL, where his work focuses on transport phenomena in the Inertial Confinement Fusion program.

Research Interests

Electron and ion transport in laser-plasma interactions and z-pinch plasmas.
Development of computational models for plasma physics.

Ph.D., Physics, Imperial College London, 2004

M. Sherlock and J.J. Bissell “Suppression of the Biermann battery and stabilization of the thermomagnetic instability in laser fusion conditions,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 055001 (2020).

M. Sherlock et al., “In-depth plasma wave heating of dense plasma irradiated by short laser pulses,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 113 255001 (2014).

M. Sherlock “Generalized Ohm’s Law for a background plasma in the presence of relativistic charged particles,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 104 205004 (2010).

A.P.L. Robinson and M. Sherlock “Magnetic collimation of fast electrons produced by ultraintense laser irradiation by structuring the target composition,” Phys. Plas. 14 (2007).

M. Sherlock et al. “Prediction of Net Gain in DT Beam-Target Interactions,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 99 255003 (2007).