Lucas Rovige

Lucas Rovige is a physicist specializing in laser-plasma acceleration who left a postdoctoral position at UCLA, where he researched plasma physics and laboratory astrophysics from 2022 to 2025, to become a visiting researcher at the Laboratory of Applied Optics (LOA) at the Institut Polytechnique de Paris, as part of the Choose France for Science programme created to attract researchers from the United States.

Rovige completed dual master's training in photonics at the Institut d'Optique Graduate School and in plasma and fusion physics at Paris-Sud University (Paris XI) from 2016 to 2019, before earning his PhD in physics at the Institut Polytechnique de Paris in 2022, with a thesis on the optimization, stabilization, and optical phase control of a high-repetition-rate laser-wakefield accelerator.

After his PhD, Rovige joined UCLA as a postdoctoral researcher, working with the UCLA plasma physics group on laboratory astrophysics and magnetic reconnection. His UCLA research moved beyond laser-wakefield acceleration into astrophysically relevant plasmas, with one major topic being the recreation of lunar mini-magnetospheres in the laboratory using laser-driven plasmas.