HIGH-ENERGY-DENSITY LABORATORY PLASMA SCIENCE | DE FOA 0002233

Opportunity Information: Apply for DE FOA 0002233

The Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, through its Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) program, together with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Defense Programs (DP) Office of Experimental Sciences, offered this funding opportunity to support research in high-energy-density (HED) laboratory plasma science under the joint SC-NNSA program. The announcement invites both new proposals and renewal applications from teams planning to seek funding in Fiscal Year 2020, with the overall aim of advancing the scientific foundations, experimental capabilities, and diagnostic and modeling tools used to understand plasmas and matter under extreme conditions similar to those found in astrophysical environments, inertial confinement fusion experiments, and other high-power laboratory platforms.

The opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number DE-FOA-0002233) is categorized as a discretionary grant supporting science and technology research and development (CFDA 81.049). Eligibility is listed as unrestricted, meaning any type of applicant entity can apply as long as they meet any additional eligibility conditions described in the full announcement. The DOE Office of Science is the issuing agency. The FOA was created on January 16, 2020, with an original application deadline of March 16, 2020.

Funding details indicate an anticipated portfolio of about eight awards, with an award ceiling of $600,000 per award (as stated in the source data). Applicants were expected to propose research efforts that clearly align with the joint program goals and the specific technical areas of interest, and to follow the general and program-specific supplemental guidance included in the full FOA package.

The technical scope is focused on several core HED plasma science themes. These include HED hydrodynamics, which covers how fluids and plasmas move and evolve at extreme energy densities, including instabilities, shocks, and turbulent mixing relevant to implosions and astrophysical analogs. Another emphasis is radiation-dominated dynamics and material properties, where radiation transport and strong coupling between radiation and matter can control energy flow and influence equation-of-state behavior, opacity, and transport coefficients under extreme conditions.

A significant area is magnetized HED plasma physics, which explores how strong magnetic fields modify heat flow, confinement, stability, reconnection, and plasma evolution in the HED regime. The FOA also highlights nonlinear optics of plasmas and laser-plasma interactions, reflecting interest in how intense laser fields propagate through and interact with plasma, drive instabilities, generate energetic particles, and shape energy deposition. Related to that, relativistic HED plasmas and intense beam physics address regimes where particles reach relativistic energies and where high-current electron/ion beams or ultra-intense lasers create extreme fields, opening research directions connected to particle acceleration, radiation generation, and fundamental plasma processes at very high intensities.

The program explicitly calls out warm dense matter (WDM), a challenging intermediate state between condensed matter and fully ionized plasma that appears in planetary interiors and in many HED experiments. Research in WDM often requires tight integration of experiment, theory, and simulation to determine equations of state, phase behavior, conductivity, and opacity in regimes where traditional plasma and solid-state approximations break down. Another targeted topic is high-Z, multiply ionized HED atomic physics, which centers on the structure and radiation behavior of heavy elements under extreme temperatures and densities, including line emission, ionization balance, opacity modeling, and atomic kinetics that are essential for interpreting experiments and for radiation-hydrodynamics simulations.

Finally, the FOA places strong emphasis on diagnostics for HED laboratory plasmas. Because HED experiments are fast, intense, and complex, progress depends heavily on advanced measurement techniques such as x-ray imaging and spectroscopy, proton radiography, optical probing, nuclear diagnostics, and novel time-resolved methods. Diagnostic development and validation are often key to extracting quantitative information about density, temperature, fields, flow, mix, and radiation, and to benchmarking simulation tools.

Overall, this FOA supports a coordinated research portfolio aimed at improving the predictive understanding of plasmas and materials at high energy density, spanning theory, computation, experiment, and measurement development. The announcement notes that more detailed expectations and topic definitions are provided in the general and program-specific supplemental sections of the full funding opportunity materials.

• The Department of Energy - Office of Science, Office of Science in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "HIGH-ENERGY-DENSITY LABORATORY PLASMA SCIENCE" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 81.049.
• This funding opportunity was created on Jan 16, 2020.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Mar 16, 2020. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $600,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 8 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

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