Solicitation
Call for Proposal Submissions: The Basic Plasma Science Facility (BaPSF) is accepting white paper proposals for experimental run time. The purpose of the Basic Plasma Science Facility is to provide the plasma science community access to frontier-level research devices (principally the Large Plasma Device (LAPD)) that permit the exploration of plasma processes which can not be studied in smaller devices or are difficult to diagnose in large (e.g. fusion) facilities.
White paper proposals are expected to be no more than 5 pages (including references) and will be accepted from scientists at any institution, including from those outside the US.
Information about the capabilities of the BaPSF devices (including available equipment, diagnostics, and range of plasma parameters) and about current user projects and research of the BaPSF group is offered on the BaPSF website For additional information, potential users are encouraged to contact the BaPSF Director, Prof. Troy Carter (tcarter@physics.ucla.edu).
The BaPSF supports two “Campaigns” with runtime that is allocated separately from this solicitation process.
The Solar Wind Campaign is led by Prof. Greg Howes (gregory-howes@uiowa.edu) and The ICRF Campaign is led by Dr. Cornwall Lau (lauch@ornl.gov).
Individuals interested in topics addressed by these campaigns (described on the BaPSF Website) may choose to contact the Campaign leaders about participation or may choose to submit their own idea separately to this solicitation.
Proposals are due November 20, 2022. Proposers should visit the MagNetUS website for details regarding both the submission and review processes.
Proposals selected from this process will be given access to runtime for two years: from approximately June 2023 until June 2025.
Funding
For users who intend to publish the results of their work using BaPSF, there is no cost for run time which includes assistance from BaPSF research staff and use of existing facility equipment (antennas, power supplies, ion/electron beams, diagnostics, etc). Users who are selected and allocated runtime will need to provide their own travel support and any other required support (e.g. support for salary of researchers or students working on the project or specialized equipment not available at BaPSF). The BaPSF director may decide to support the construction of new apparatus for a user experiment if that apparatus (e.g. diagnostic, antenna, etc) requires a reasonably small amount of resources to fabricate and could be utilized by other users. The purchase or fabrication of other experimental apparatus (that does not satisfy the description in the previous sentence) would need to be funded by the user. Users can obtain financial support for their projects through application to federal agencies. In particular, the NSF/DOE Partnership in Basic Plasma Science and Engineering along with NASA (e.g. H-TIDES) and DOD programs (e.g. MURI) have supported several BaPSF users.
In the past, DOE Office of Science Fusion Energy Sciences has issued targeted FOA and Lab Announcements to support frontier science experiments on one or more of the currently FES General Plasma Science (GPS) program supported collaborative research facilities or initiatives. These include the Basic Plasma Science Facility (BaPSF/LAPD) at UCLA, the DIII-D Frontier Science Initiative at General Atomics, the Wisconsin Plasma Physics Laboratory (WiPPL/BRB/MST) at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, the Magnetized Dusty Plasma Experiment at Auburn University, the low-temperature Plasma Research Facility (PRF) at Sandia National Laboratories and the Princeton Collaborative Research Facility (PCRF) at Princeton Plasma Physics laboratory. U.S. researchers whose experimental proposals were selected or have been selected for experimental runtime in any of these facilities are eligible to apply. For more information, please contact DOE Program Manager Nirmol Podder (nirmol.Podder@science.doe.gov).
Policies and Procedures
For LAPD, experimental run time is allocated in units of run weeks (the week time scale includes the time to setup and teardown the experiment). White paper proposals can request up to 3 weeks of run time per calendar year (typically not allocated consecutively) over two years. Approximately 20 run weeks are available yearly for BaPSF users (this depends on facility uptime).
Users are not required to collaborate with BaPSF research staff on their research projects using the facility. BaPSF runtime allocation comes with technical support from the BaPSF resident staff in setting up and taking down experiment-specific equipment, operation of facility experimental devices, and data collection. This technical support does not require BaPSF research staff to act as collaborators on the user’s research project nor does it result in a requirement for co-authorship on publications resulting from the work. Consultations with BaPSF staff about the facility capabilities ahead of a white paper submission also do not require that BaPSF researchers will be collaborators on user research using the facility. However, if during planning and execution of an experimental campaign the user desires intellectual involvement from the BaPSF research staff (engages BaPSF staff directly in the experiments and/or data analysis in a collaborative fashion), it is expected that they would be offered co-authorship on any scientific papers or presentations resulting from such an experimental campaign.
We welcome proposals from theoreticians and others who are not laboratory experimentalists; the BaPSF research staff can assist with the design and execution of experiments.
Users are required to acknowledge DOE and NSF support for BaPSF in any publications including BaPSF data.