WING3	Visualising extreme states of matter and nanomaterials with the world's best cameras
Type	Modelling/computer simulation
#students	1
Orientation	Why is the scientific problem of interest at all? The European X-ray Free Electron Laser (EuXFEL) being built in Hamburg, Germany, will be the brightest light source in the world.  It will benefit many areas of science, from creating extreme states of matter in plasma physics, seeing chemical reactions and investigating new nanomaterials or the structure of large biomolecules such as proteins
How	How is the research going to shed light on the given problem?. An intense photon beam impacts on a sample and the diffractive pattern is seen in large, digital mega-pixel cameras, of which several different designs exist.
What	What is the specific thing that the student will do, and how does it fit inside the overall project? This project will focus on understanding the physics of these relatively low energy (~10 keV) photons interacting with the silicon detectors and developing new models which can then be applicable for all processes independent of the camera used.  This will include models of charge sharing in a semi-conductor and thermal noise estimation.  The models developed will be based on fits to different data or phenomenological ideas.  The work will involve coding these simulations into a software framework and comparison with data, including, possibly, brand new data from this year using prototype cameras inserted into a beamline in Hamburg.  The results of this work will allow better imaging of the various samples to be probed at the future EuXFEL and hence provide a clearer view of the science.  Such simulations and understanding of the underlying physics will be beneficial to other light sources as well as, potentially, astrophysics and medical imaging.
Special Knowledge	Knowledge of c++ and linux an advantage
Supervisor	Prof. Matthew Wing mw@hep.ucl.ac.uk