Sam M. Vinko

As a Tutorial Fellow in Physics at Trinity I teach a range of topics across the undergraduate curriculum, with a focus on the Mathematics courses, Optics, and Atomic and Laser Physics. In the Physics Department I’ve lectured the first-year course on Vector Calculus, and have given graduate lectures in Density Functional Theory and related methods applied to the study of dense plasmas. I also regularly offer Computational physics projects to undergraduate students in the third and fourth years.

I’m interested in understanding the behaviour of quantum systems in extreme conditions of temperature, density and pressure. Such conditions are ubiquitous in large astrophysical objects such as (exo)planets and stars, but are also of critical importance to research in inertial confinement fusion. To create and study these systems in the laboratory my research group uses some of the largest light sources on the planet, including the LCLS x-ray free-electron laser in California, and the European XFEL in Germany. The experimental research we do is deeply integrated with theoretical and computational endeavours, both in terms of quantum modelling via techniques such as density functional theory, and atomic physics modelling via collisional-radiative atomic kinetics. We also extensively use machine learning to support our research, ranging from prediction acceleration via various novel approaches in deep learning, to the application of Bayesian inference and other advanced statistical techniques to the robust interpretation of noisy, incomplete experimental data.

Amoretti et al., Isostructural Phase Transition of Fe2O3 under Laser Shock Compression. Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 176102 (2025).

Forte et al., Resonant inelastic x-ray scattering in warm-dense Fe compounds beyond the SASE resolution limit. Commun. Phys. 7, 266 (2024).

Kasim & Vinko, Learning the exchange-correlation functional from nature with fully differentiable density functional theory. Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 126403 (2021).

Vinko et al., Creation and diagnosis of a solid-density plasma with an X-ray free-electron laser. Nature 482 (7383), 59 (2012).