Toshiki Tajima

is a Japanese theoretical plasma physicist known for pioneering the laser wakefield acceleration technique with John M. Dawson in 1979. The technique is used to accelerate particles in a plasma and was experimentally realized in 1994, for which Tajima received several awards such as the Nishina Memorial Prize, the Enrico Fermi Prize (2015), the Robert R. Wilson Prize (2019), the Hannes Alfvén Prize (2019) and the Charles Hard Townes Award (2020).

Tajima is currently a professor of the University of California, Irvine, and is the Chief Science Officer of TAE Technologies. His works involve plasma physics, laser physics, nuclear fusion, plasma astrophysics, accelerator physics and medical applications of physics.

Early life and career Tajima was born in the Aichi prefecture of Japan in 1948. He was Blaise Pascal Professor and Einstein Professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Tajima is also the Chief Science Officer of TAE Technologies, a company founded in 1998 that deals with aneutronic fusion power.

For his work on laser wakefield acceleration, Tajima received the Nishina Memorial Prize in 2006; the Enrico Fermi Prize of the Italian Physical Society in 2015; the Robert R. Wilson Prize of the American Physical Society the Hannes Alfvén Prize of the European Physical Society in 2019; and the Charles Hard Townes Award from The Optical Society in 2020.

Publications