Pisin Chen

Professor Pisin Chen is LeCosPA Founding Director Emeritus and Chee-Chun Leung Distinguished Chair Professor of Cosmology, as well as Distinguished Chair Professor at the Department of Physics, NTU. Before joining NTU in 2007, he was a Permanent Member of the Kavli Institute of Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), Stanford University, which he initiated and helped establish in 2000. Before joining SLAC, Stanford in 1986, he was an Assistant Research Physicist at Institute of Plasma Physics, UCLA. Prof. Chen received his BS degree from the Department of Physics at NTU and his PhD degree from UCLA in Theoretical Particle Physics under J. J. Sakurai.

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Prof. Pisin Chen’s research interests span across many fields in physics, from astrophysics, cosmology, gravity, to plasma physics, beam physics, and nuclear fusion. He does both theoretical and experimental works. In cosmology, his major attention has been the initial state of the universe, the nature of dark energy and dark matter, as well as signatures that may distinguish dynamical dark energy from a cosmological constant. In astrophysics, he applied the plasma wakefield acceleration principle to "cosmic accelerators" that can produce ultra-high-energy cosmic rays and neutrinos. In gravity, he has published numerous papers on the nature of black hole Hawking evaporation and the solution to information loss paradox based on Euclidean quantum gravity. In 2017, he proposed, together with 2018 Nobel Laureate Prof. Gerard Mourou, the use of relativistic flying plasma mirrors induced by the laser-plasma interaction to mimic black hole Hawking evaporation so as to investigate the information loss paradox in the laboratory. He received the 2018 Blaise Pascal Chair for this conception. He was awarded with the 2023 European Physics Society Hannes Alfven Prize for his invention of Plasma Wakefield Accelerator in 1985. On the experimental side, he initiated the international collaboration of ARA (Askaryan Radio Array) Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole in 2009, and has been leading, together with Prof. Jiwoo Nam, the Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Neutrino Group at LeCosPA since 2007. He leads the AnaBHEL (Analog Black Hole Evaporation via Lasers) International Collaboration to physically carry out the analog black hole experiment that he and Mourou proposed. Recently, he splits his time to investigate a novel non-thermal pB fusion scheme with the hope to provide a clean and affordable energy to the world.