Stephen Slutz, PhD

Stephen A. Slutz, Ph.D. is a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories, where he has worked since 1978. At Sandia, Slutz designed light ion-driven inertial fusion targets, including the greenhouse target, which was adopted as the main approach to light ion fusion. He also developed magnetically insulated light ion diodes both theoretically and experimentally, work for which he holds a patent.

Slutz was chief theorist on z-pinch driven dynamic hohlraums, designing and simulating dynamic hohlraums to drive inertial fusion targets which held the record neutron yield for pulsed power driven fusion in 2006. His contributions to the MagLIF (magnetized linear inertial fusion) concept include demonstrating numerically that high-gain is possible with magneto-inertial fusion and the development of auto-magnetizing linear to obtain highly magnetized fuel.

Slutz received his PhD in Astrophysics from the California Institute of Technology in 1978. He shared a 2004 Lockheed Martin Nova award in 2004 for his work on z-pinch driven dynamic hohlraums, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society.