News Archives - Laboratory for Laser Energetics

Group photo of students in front of the National Ignition Facility wall sign.

The Opportunity of a Lifetime

Students Gain Rare Access to Some of the Countryʼs Leading Science Facilities For most undergraduates, national laboratories exist only as names on research papers or distant career possibilities. This past…

The OMEGA target chamber at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics

Fusion Science for High-Yield Applications

Current Status of Inertial Confinement Fusion Research December 5, 2022, marked a major milestone for humankind. On this day, a team led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) used the…

Image of a computer-simulated image of an imploding capsule and a graph on the right depicting GFLOPs of new High-Performance Computing Systems at LLE by Year.

Simulation Impossible

Inside the Computational Science Infrastructure Driving LLE’s Research Much of the most important work at LLE happens not just in a lab but on a computer, where plasma behaviors are…

Streaked spectrometer image showing the ripple-like pattern produced by SSD wavelength modulation (wavelength versus time, with color indicating intensity).

Beam Smoothing for Picket-Pulse Fusion Experiments

How Spectral Dispersion and Timing Improve Irradiation Uniformity on OMEGA The OMEGA Laser System is designed to deliver laser energy as uniformly as possible to a spherical target using 60…

US IFE Conference Focuses a National Effort

More than 225 members of the US inertial fusion energy (IFE) community gathered in the Washington, DC, area on March 22–27 for the second annual US IFE Conference, formerly IFE-STAR.…

Group of all in-person OLUG attendees standing in the LLE East Lobby.

OLUG Hosts its 17th Annual Workshop

The 17th Omega Laser Facility Users Group (OLUG) Workshop, held April 28–30, 2026 at LLE, brought together approximately 150 participants from 32 institutions, including 70 students and postdocs. The annual…

New Publication by David Turnbull in Physical Review Letters

Congratulations to LLE scientists David Turnbull and coauthors Avi Milder, Russ Follett, Joe Katz, and Dustin Froula, whose paper “Thomson Scattering with Gain” has recently been published in Physical…

Photo of liquid crytals.

Liquid Crystal Plasma Mirrors: A Breakthrough for NSF OPAL

Researchers at LLE and The Ohio State University (OSU) have teamed together to develop renewable, liquid crystal plasma mirrors (LCPMs) to enhance the temporal contrast of the 25-PW pulses planned…

Close-up photograph of a cone0-in-shell photograph with a puff of air on a blue background

A Gentle Puff with a Big Impact: A New System Advances Cryogenic Target Technology

A new gas puffer system (GPS) is transforming how fusion scientists fill cryogenic targets, turning precise whiffs of deuterium gas into liquid fuel and opening the door to next-generation “wetted-foam”…

A conceptual rendering of Focused Energy's Fusion Pilot Plant.

LLE and Focused Energy Inc. Announce $6.9 Million Research Collaboration to Bridge Fusion Science and Commercial Power

The University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) and Focused Energy Inc. have established a $6.9 million partnership, the largest single industrial-sponsored research agreement awarded to LLE, to address…

Colorful gradient with Physics of Plasmas and AIP Publishing logos at the top and a figure at the botom showing a direct relationship between accuracy and level of theoretical refinement.

Valentin Karasiev’s Paper Selected as Editor’s Pick in Physics of Plasmas

Congratulations to LLE staff scientist Valentin Karasiev and coauthors Suxing Hu, Katerina Hilleke, Ammar Ellaboudy, Deyan Mihaylov, and Samuel Trickey, whose paper “Thermal Exchange-Correlation Functionals: Capturing Quantum Electron Behavior…

Photograph of FLUX SHG stage

FLUX: A Next-Generation Broadband Laser for Direct-Drive Fusion Experiments

A Next-Generation Broadband Laser for Direct-Drive Fusion Experiments A New Laser Concept to Mitigate Laser–Plasma Instabilities Achieving fusion in the laboratory has proven a grand challenge of science. At its…