Jack Halliday

Experimental scientist

Jack (he/them) is a hands-on experimental physicist specialising in laboratory astrophysics and plasma diagnostic development, principally X-ray spectroscopy and optical Thomson scattering. They earned their PhD at Imperial College London with the MAGPIE group, where they explored radiation-dominated plasmas driven with high-current pulsed-power.

He also worked as a post-doc in Gianluca Gregori’s group at University of Oxford, leading experiments on axion searches, pair plasmas, and cosmic-ray analogues using drivers including free-electron lasers, particle accelerators, and high-power lasers.

At the Central Laser Facility, they work within the design team for Vulcan 20-20, whilst maintaining active research interests in lab astronomy and physics beyond the standard model experiments.

Laboratory astrophysics, high energy density physics, beyond the standard model physics, dark matter, axion searches, pair plasma, plasma diagnostics.

“Bounds on Heavy Axions with an X-Ray Free Electron Laser” Physics Review Letters 134, 055002 (2025) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.055001 arXiv:2404.17333 J. W. D. Halliday , G. Marocco, K. A. Beyer, C. Heaton, M. Nakatsutsumi, T. R. Preston, C. D. Arrowsmith , C. Baehtz, S. Goede, O. Humphries, A. Laso Garcia, R. Plackett, P. Svensson, G. Vacalis , J. Wark, D. Wood, U. Zastrau, R. Bingham, I. Shipsey, S. Sarkar, and G. Gregori
“Laboratory realization of relativistic pair-plasma beams” Nature Communications 15, 5029 (2024) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49346-2 arXiv:2312.05244 C. D. Arrowsmith, P. J. Simon, P. Bilbao, A. F. A. Bott, S. Burger, H. Chen, F. D. Cruz, T. Davenne, I. Efthymiopoulos, D. H. Froula, A. M. Goillot, J. T. Gudmundsson, D. Haberberger, J. W. D. Halliday, T. Hodge, B. T. Huffman, S. Iaquinta, F. Miniati, B. Reville, S. Sarkar, A. A. Schekochihin, L. O. Silva, R. Simpson, V. Stergiou, R. M. G. M Trines, T. Vieu, N. Charitonidis, R. Bingham, and G. Gregori
“Numerical simulations of laser-driven experiments of ion acceleration in stochastic magnetic fields” Physics of Plasmas 31, 122105 (2024) DOI: 10.1063/5.0223496 K. Moczulski, H. Wen, T. Campbell, A. Scopatz, C. A. J. Palmer, A. F. A. Bott, C. D. Arrowsmith, K. A. Beyer, A. Blazevic, V. Bagnoud, S. Feister, J. W. D. Halliday, O. Karnbach, M. Metternich, H. Nazary, P. Neumayer, A. Reyes, E. C. Hansen, D. Schumacher, C. Spindloe, S. Sarkar, A. R. Bell, R. Bingham, F. Miniati, A. A. Schekochihin, B. Reville, D. Q. Lamb, G. Gregori, and P. Tzeferacos