Videos Featuring LLE

LLE Featured on News 10NBC

Beyond the walls of the Laboratory for Laser Energetics is a small city of 450 scientists, engineers, and technicians and two massive lasers working to create nuclear fusion as a clean and nearly limitless source of energy.

12 December 2023

Physicists have a pretty good handle on how stuff behaves on the surface of the Earth. But a lot of matter in the universe exists outside this narrow band of relatively low temperatures and pressures. Inside planets and stars, the crushing force of gravity begins to overwhelm the electromagnetic and nuclear forces that keep atoms apart and maintain the shapes of molecules.

What happens next? Scientists (including a consortia of researchers at the NSF Center for Matter at Atomic Pressures​​) are just starting to figure that out. They use a variety of tools (including some humongous lasers, like OMEGA at the University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics) to simulate planetary cores and see what happens.

Presented by the Center for Matter at Atomic Pressures (CMAP) at the University of Rochester, a National Science Foundation (NSF) Physics Frontiers Center, Award PHY-2020249.

13 November 2023

A new supercomputer housed at the University of Rochester will make it possible for researchers to simulate complex high-energy-density phenomena in inertial confinement fusion in three dimensions with unprecedented details. The supercomputer, dubbed “Conesus” after one of the Finger Lakes, also uses artificial intelligence and machine-learning tools to advance progress in high-energy-density science. 

2 November 2023

APS WebsEdge Science: University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics

The Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) at the University of Rochester has long been a leader in its field. Founded just 10 years after the laser’s invention, the LLE puts its students at the forefront of its work. In fact, in 2018, a former grad student from the lab was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for research she conducted while at the LLE. The lab continues its legacy now by pioneering new technologies that will yield some of the highest-power lasers in the world.

3 March 2023

Adapting the Laboratory for Laser Energetics to the Pandemic

This video highlights the revisions that were made to the Omega Facility and its operational paradigm in order to continue to conduct experiments in the presence of COVID-19 workplace constraints.

6 April 2021

Center for Matter at Atomic Pressures Featured in APS TV Video

The Center for Matter at Atomic Pressures (CMAP) was featured in a video produced by the American Physical Society in their APS TV Video series. The video shows research conducted by CMAP and highlights LLE scientists, staff, and facilities, including the Director for CMAP and Associate Director of Science, Technology and Academics at LLE, Gilbert “Rip” Collins.

8 March 2021

LLE Gets Wired!

Nobel Laureate, Donna Strickland, is featured in the new Wired Magazine Web Series: 5 Levels with LLE Director, Mike Campbell. The series takes an expert scientist and challenges him or her to explain a high-level subject in five different layers of complexity—first to a child, then a teenager, then an undergrad majoring in the same subject, a grad student and, finally, a colleague. Campbell appears as Strickland’s chosen colleague in the episode.

28 Oct 2019

A Unique University Research and Education Center for HEDP, Fusion, and High-Power Lasers

LLE is a world-leading university-based laboratory of scale with activities focused in laser fusion, high-energy-density physics (HEDP), laser and optics sciences and engineering, and education for the future work force in these areas. The lasers at LLE are the largest in any academic setting and are the major user facility in the world for HEDP with over 400 users and over 85 institutions conducting research at LLE. Research at LLE has led to nearly 500 Ph.D. degrees with alumni now at national laboratories, universities, and industry. The quality of research has recently been highlighted by the 2018 Nobel prize in physics that was awarded for research done at LLE.

4 March 2019