A Time of Diversification

John C. Browne, P-Division Leader (1981-1984)

The period from 1981 to 1984 was an exciting and challenging time for the Physics (P) Division. I became Division Leader in September 1981 after Jay Keyworth left Los Alamos to become President Reagan’s Science Advisor. I knew that Jay would be a tough act to follow.

P Division had about 450 people in 1981. We had 15 groups covering plasma physics, nuclear physics, optics, low-temperature physics, materials science, laser physics, weapons diagnostics, computer systems, and mechanical engineering. Support for the Division came primarily from the nuclear weapons program for weapons physics, from experiments performed at the Nevada Test Site (NTS), and from the inertial-confinement-fusion (ICF) program. Other support was received from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Basic Energy Sciences (OBES) and the Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics. About 10% of the Division’s support for our programs came from Laboratory Directed Research and Development—then known as Institutional Supporting Research and Development (ISRD).

I saw that the major mission of P Division was to provide the Laboratory with state-of-the-art experimentation to help solve problems related the Laboratory’s programs. To accomplish this, I believed that we had to have outstanding physicists performing research on the leading-edge questions of their fields. It was also important for our people to understand the needs of the applied programs so that they could make the best contributions possible. It appeared to me that there was a strongly ingrained culture at Los Alamos that separated physicists into basic and applied. I strove to get our staff to understand that they were simply physicists, not basic or applied or worse, just diagnosticians. I felt that our staff could and should have broad interests in problem solving, even if their main activities were focused toward a particular problem area. I wanted our physicists to publish, to interact with the international scientific community, and to be sought out for their expertise by people throughout the Laboratory.

There were many exciting people and activities that I encountered during my three years as P-Division Leader. For example, it was always a pleasure to interact with John Wheatley who was in P-10. John was just beginning his work on natural heat engines, which required few or no moving parts. He had a young postdoc at that time, Greg Swift, who has continued this outstanding work after John’s untimely death. I remember one special trip that the three of us made to DOE/OBES to try to extract more funds for John’s research. On the way to Washington, John insisted that I sit between Greg and him. He proceeded to give me a 5-hour lecture on the physics of heat engines. I learned more thermodynamics on that trip than in all my years in graduate and undergraduate school. John also wanted to do a demonstration of his acoustic engine concept in Germantown for Lou Ianiello, who was head of the Division of Materials Science at the time. John needed some liquid nitrogen, which he found nearby at the National Bureau of Standards Facility. He then showed up at the DOE security entrance desk in Germantown with a dewar of liquid nitrogen, which was spewing fumes. The DOE guards did not know how to react. John volunteered to drink some if they thought it was a problem! We made it into the building through John’s persuasive powers. I am not sure we could do that today.

John Wheatley (center), Greg Swift (left), and Al Migliori inspect a liquid-propylene Stirling-cycle refrigerator developed as part of their program to explore novel heat-engine physics and technology.

P Division made many excellent contributions to the nuclear weapons program during this period. I was the head of the weapons physics program, and we were able to work closely with the Applied Theoretical Physics (X) Division in planning and performing a number of important experiments locally, e.g., the very low-energy (d,t) measurements by Bill Jarmie and Ron Brown, and at NTS, e.g., the radiation-flow measurements. We also were able to convince the DOE Defense Programs Office that the construction of several beam lines at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s National Synchrotron Light Source should be supported. These beam lines turned out to be valuable assets for P-Division’ s weapons activities and for our materials-science efforts. In addition, P Division played a major role in early 1982 in the formulation of the nuclear Strategic Defense Initiative activities. Our x-ray laser program, which Tom Stratton headed for P Division, made several major contributions to the national program, particularly as a result of our one underground nuclear shot at NTS. The Prometheus program was also an important spin-off of P-3’s equation-of-state program that began in the 1970s under Ben Diven and then reached fruition in the late 1970s and early 1980s through Sonny Ragan’s hard work and dedication (with X-Division support). We also helped Bill Hughes keep the difficult start-up phases of the Perseid program alive. P-14 and P-15 also made many outstanding technical improvements during this period, including the fiber-optics efforts pioneered by Pete Lyons and the time-resolved PINEX measurements by Nick King and others. Our measurement efforts paid off in important ways for the weapons program to the point where my discussions with people from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, including John Nuckolls, who was Associate Director for physics at the time, convinced them that they had to put more emphasis on experimental science to keep pace with us.

The ICF program presented the biggest challenge to me and many others in the Division during this period. The definitive experiments on the interaction of 10-m light with a variety of targets, including hohlraums, were carried out by Phil Goldstone, Allan Hauer, and members of Group P-4, along with support from a number of other groups, including P-2, P-14, and X-1. Sid Singer played a pivotal role in developing Helios to the point that it was the most productive laser in the national ICF program. George Spillman played a key role for P Division in overseeing the technical review of all the data and integrating it into a coherent picture. His work showed evidence that long-wavelength lasers would not provide the characteristics needed to meet ICF goals.

We also completed the construction of the large Antares CO2 laser during this period. It was built as the follow-up of the Helios system. Through the efforts of Jorg Jansen and his team, we were able to achieve 20 kJ of energy and do a variety of experiments that continued to confirm the Helios results about long-wavelength light. It was at this time that we started a small effort to develop the short-wavelength (0.25 \.1) KrF laser as an alternative approach to the CO2 laser and to the frequency-shifted Nd:YAG laser approach by Livermore. We got off to a good start under Greg Canavan and Allan Hunter when they were able to achieve a 10-kJ shot out of the large-scale amplifier that they built in under one year. Developing a true demonstration of the KrF technology for fusion proved much harder than we had anticipated. Our inability to produce key results during the period from 1983 to 1984 turned out to be prophetic of the problems that our KrF program would continue to have in the late 1980s. This KrF program was probably my biggest disappointment as P-Division Leader, and I learned a lot about organizational dynamics from that experience. I wish that I had been able to provide stronger technical and personal leadership to that effort. A spin-off of that effort, however, did lead to the Los Alamos Bright Source program. Gottfried Schappert provided much of the key scientific leadership to that effort, which still continues today.

The Proton Storage Ring (PSR) project was busily under way from 1981 to 1984. Under Richard Silver in Group P-8, we were attempting to build up our expertise in neutron scattering so that we could take full advantage of the powerful pulses that should be delivered by the PSR. It was an uphill battle because we had to contend with the Argonne National Laboratory neutron-scattering facility, called the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source. In spite of a strong recommendation from the Brinkman National Academy of Science (NAS) panel on neutron scattering, we were not well accepted. A second NAS panel under Fred Seitz and Dean Eastman was convened during this period to review the country’s strategy for both neutron and light sources. They reaffirmed that the Los Alamos PSR was the way to proceed for pulsed-neutron sources, but they recommended that we build a new experimental hall to accommodate a national-user community. We proceeded to formulate our strategy to get a line-item construction project for a new experimental hall. I spent a considerable amount of time and effort, including a testimony to the House Science and Technology Committee, justifying this project to a lot of people. The project, which we were finally successful in getting approved, resulted in the nice facilities that are now found at the Manuel Lujan, Jr., Neutron Scattering Center (LANSCE). This was one of my most rewarding activities during my tenure as P-Division Leader. We were able to attract some excellent people to the neutron-scattering program. These people helped us build the reputation and capabilities that led to LANSCE and also provide a new life for the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility as the next-generation intense neutron source.

The period from 1981 to 1984 was also an exciting time for the nuclear-physics efforts in P Division. We were able to attract Hamish Robertson and Tom Bowles to begin a weak-interaction physics program that still rates as one the best today. The tritium-beta-decay experiment, which began around 1981, was strongly supported by our Director via ISRD. I was very proud to have been associated with the beginnings of that experiment and even made a few minor technical contributions. The ultimate accomplishments on the mass of the neutrino from this experiment were due to the meticulous detailed analysis of all the possible systematic errors that could occur at the 10-eV level. During this time, many other exciting efforts that contributed to an already strong nuclear physics program in P Division were started by Ralph DeVries, Joel Moss, and others. And the nuclear physics effort at the Weapons Neutron Research Facility began to show promise under the leadership of Paul Lisowski, Charlie Bowman, and others.

One of the risks that I took as P-Division Leader involved one of our nuclear physicists, Ed Flynn, who came to me with a request to start a new effort outside his area of expertise. Ed wanted to begin experimental activities in the field of magnetoencephalography because of personal experiences and because of an intellectual interest in the functions of the human brain. I used some discretionary resources to help Ed get started with SQUID (Superconducting QUantum Interference Device) technology needed to measure the minute magnetic fields that emanate from the brain when neurons fire. This effort was taken in collaboration with the Life Sciences (LS) Division and has resulted in a new Laboratory program of which I am very proud. This embryonic effort paved the way for P Division to get more deeply involved with biophysics.

View from the inside of the magnetic spectrometer used for tritiium-beta-decay experiments at Los Alamos.

There were many other exciting activities that I will not take the time to mention, and I apologize to those outstanding scientists who carried them out. I assure you that I have not forgotten them. Some of my most rewarding activities as P-Division Leader were in the recruiting of outstanding people, most of whom are still with us, and in my personal interactions with everyone in the Division. As Division Leader, I learned a lot, I had a lot of fun, and I had a lot of support from the best people in the Laboratory. I hope that I laid the groundwork for future Division Leaders to carry on the outstanding traditions of P Division with respect to experimental physics. P Division will be 50 years old this year. I am proud to have been a part of its history.

LA-12501-PR

-Back to History-