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Faculty Profile

David A. Hammer

Department: ECE

Title: J.C. Ward Jr. Professor of Nuclear Energy Engineering

Personal Web Site:
http://people.ece.cornell.edu/hammer/

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Degrees earned:
 B.S. Calif. Inst. of Technology 1964
 Ph.D. Cornell University 1969

Address:
Office:
 327 Rhodes Hall
 Ithaca, NY, 14853

Office Phone: (607) 255-3916

Biography:

Dr. Hammer is the J. Carlton Ward Professor of Nuclear Energy Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has been on the Cornell faculty since 1977. Hammer worked at the Naval Research Laboratory in 1969-1976, was a Visiting Associate Professor (part time) at the University of Maryland in 1973-1976, and was an Associate Professor at UCLA in 1977; in 1983-84, 1991 and 2004 he was a Visiting Senior Fellow at Imperial College, London. He has been a consultant to several corporations and government laboratories. Dr. Hammer has authored or co-authored about 120 articles that have appeared in refereed journals and about 75 that have been published in conference proceedings. He holds a patent on the x-pinch x-ray source for application to lithography in microelectronics manufacturing, and another for using the X pinch for imaging biological specimens. His research is supported by DOE and Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque.

Dr. Hammer is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), of IEEE and of the AAAS. In 2004, he was the winner of the IEEE Plasma Science and Applications Committee Award. He served as the Chair-Elect of the Division of Plasma Physics (DPP) of the American Physical Society (APS) in 2003, and as the Chair of the division in 2004.  Dr. Hammer was elected Division Councillor of the DPP in 2006 and is serving a 4-year term on the APS Council as a result (2007-2010).  He is serving as a member of the APS Executive Board during 2009 and 2010.  

Research interests:

1. Intense pulsed light ion beams for application to magnetic confinement fusion: we study intense ion beam generation technology and physics, and intense ion beam interaction with gases and plasmas.

2. High energy density plasmas: we study the dynamics of fine wires exploded by short high current pulses. Experiments carried out with single wires are investigating the physical processes of the wires during the explosion process. Experiments with 2-4 wires that cross and touch in the middle, in the form of an X, are used to generate very high energy density plasmas and high intensity x-ray point sources. Experiments with multiple wire arrays are intended to study the dynamics of the plasmas that form around the wires as they interact with each other, as well as the high energy density plasmas that form when the individual wire plasmas merge on the array axis.  Many of these experiments address questions related to inertial confinement fusion.

3. Plasma measurements by optical techniques: we use the techniques of visible light and x-ray spectroscopy, laser-based diagnostic methods and advanced electro-optical instruments to study the properties of dense plasmas without perturbing them; we develop new diagnostic techniques for dense plasmas using these methods.

4. We use the tiny plasma source generated by the X pinch (see item 2) to study the properties of near-solid-density plasmas at 10,000,000 K. We are also developing this source for possible application to biomedical radiography.

Selected Publications:

D. H. Kalantar and D. A. Hammer. Observation of a Stable Dense Core within an Unstable Coronal Plasma in Wire-Initiated Dense Z-Pinch Experiments. Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 3806 (1993).

S. A. Pikuz, T. A. Shelkovenko, D. B. Sinars, J.B. Greenly, Y. S. Dimant and D. A. Hammer. Multiphase Foam-like Structure of Exploding Wire Cores. Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 4313 (1999).

D. A. Hammer and D.B. Sinars. Single-wire Explosion Experiments Relevant to the Initial Stages of Wire Array Z pinches. Laser and Particle Beams 19, 377 (2001).

S.A. Pikuz, D. B. Sinars, T. A. Shelkovenko, K.M. Chandler, D. A. Hammer, G. V. Ivanenkov, W. Stepniewski, and I. Yu Skobelev. High Energy Density Z-Pinch Plasma Conditions with Picosecond Time Resolution. Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 035003 (2002).

Byung Moo Song, T. A. Shelkovenko, S. A. Pikuz, M. D. Mitchell, K.M. Chandler and D. A. Hammer. X-Pinch X-Ray Radiation Above 8 keV for Application to High-Resolution Radiography of Biological Specimens. IEEE Trans. 51, 2514 (2004).

D. B. Sinars, L. Gregorian, D. A. Hammer, Y. Maron. Plasma imaging and spectroscopy diagnostics developed on 100-500-kA pulsed power devices. Proc. IEEE 92, 1110-1121 (2004).

Bland, S. N.; Lebedev, S. V.; Chittenden, J. P.; Ampleford, D. J.; Bott, S. C.; Gomez, J. A.; Haines, M. G.; Hall, G. N.; Hammer, D. A.; Mitchell, I. H.; Palmer, J. B. A.. Effect of radial-electric-field polarity on wire-array Z-pinch dynamics. Physical Review Letters 95, 135001-1 (2005). http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.135001

Pikuz, S. A.; Shelkovenko, T. A.; Sinars, D. B.; Hammer, D. A.; Lebedev, S. V.; Bland, S. N.; Skobelev, Y.; Abdallah, J.; Fontes, C. J.; Zhang, H. L.. Spatial, temporal, and spectral characteristics of an X pinch. Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer 71, 581-94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0022-4073(01)00100-5

Shelkovenko, T. A.; Pikuz, S. A.; Song, B. M.; Chandler, K. M.; Mitchell, M. D.; Hammer, D. A.; Ivanenkov, G. V.; Mingaleev, A. R.; Romanova, V. M.. Electron-beam-generated x rays from X pinches. Physics of Plasmas 12, 033102 (2005). http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.1849798

J. P. Chittenden, A. Ciardi, C. A. Jennings, S. V. Lebedev, D. A Hammer, S. A. Pikuz, and T. A. Shelkovenko,“Structural Evolution and Formation of High-Pressure Plasmas in X Pinches,” Physical Review Letters 98, 025003 (2007).

N.Yu. Orlov, S.Yu. Gus'kov,S.A. Pikuz, V.B. Rozanov, T.A. Shelkovenko, N.V. Zmitrenko and D.A. Hammer, “Theoretical and experimental studies of the radiative properties of hot dense matter for optimizing soft X-ray sources,” , Laser and Particle Beams 25, 415-423 (2007).  

D. B. Sinars, S. A. Pikuz, J. D. Douglass, R. D. McBride, D. J. Ampleford,P. Knapp, K. Bell, D. Chalenksi, M. E. Cuneo, J. B. Greenly, D. A. Hammer,B. R. Kusse, A. Mingaleev, T. A. Shelkovenko and D. F. Wenger, “Bright spots in 1 MA X pinches as a function of wire number and material,” Physics of Plasmas 15, 092703 (2008).

R. D. McBride, T. A. Shelkovenko, S. A. Pikuz, D. A. Hammer, J. B. Greenly, B. R. Kusse, J. D. Douglass, P. F. Knapp, K. S. Bell, I. C. Blesener, and D. A. Chalenski, “Implosion dynamics and radiation characteristics of wire-array Z pinches on the Cornell Beam Research Accelerator,” Physics of Plasmas 16, 012706 (2009).