Malka came from a Jewish family in Morocco and came to France at the age of six, where he grew up in Marseille and in the Parisian suburbs. He studied at the Ecole nationale supérieure de chimie in Rennes and received his doctorate at the École Polytechnique with a dissertation in atomic and plasma physics. From 1990, he then worked at the École Polytechnique for the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), and from 2004 as Research Director of the Laboratory for Applied Optics (LOA). From 2003 to 2015, he was a professor at the École Polytechnique. He has been a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science since 2015.
Publications
Modena, A.; Najmudin, Z.; Dangor, A. E.; Clayton, C. E.; Marsh, K. A.; Joshi, C.; Malka, V.; Darrow, C. B.; Danson, C.; Neely, D.; Walsh, F. N. (1995). "Electron acceleration from the breaking of relativistic plasma waves". Nature. 377 (6550): 606–608. Bibcode:1995Natur.377..606M. doi:10.1038/377606a0. ISSN0028-0836. S2CID4301628.
Gordon, D.; Tzeng, K. C.; Clayton, C. E.; Dangor, A. E.; Malka, V.; Marsh, K. A.; Modena, A.; Mori, W. B.; Muggli, P.; Najmudin, Z.; Neely, D. (1998). "Observation of Electron Energies Beyond the Linear Dephasing Limit from a Laser-Excited Relativistic Plasma Wave". Physical Review Letters. 80 (10): 2133–2136. Bibcode:1998PhRvL..80.2133G. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.80.2133. ISSN0031-9007.
Shvets, G.; Fisch, N. J. (1997). "Beam-generated plasma channels for laser wakefield acceleration". The seventh workshop on advanced accelerator concepts. The Seventh Workshop on Advanced Accelerator Concepts. Vol. 398. ASCE. pp. 344–356. Bibcode:1997AIPC..398..344S. doi:10.1063/1.53018. ISBN1-56396-697-2.