2018: On 12 September 2018, Josh Farrelman from the Office of Government and Community Relations announced that the FY19 Energy and Water Bill was released to approve $80M for LLE, a $5M increase over FY 2018 and the highest level of federal funding ever appropriated to the LLE in the University’s history. $545M was approved […]
2018: Profs. Donna Strickland and Gérard Mourou were awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics “for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics” for their invention of chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) while at the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics in the 1980s. Prof. Strickland developed CPA as a graduate student with Prof. Mourou […]
2017: Shown here is Senior Manufacturing Engineer Dale Guy (left) and Research Engineer Robert Earley (right) are shown working on the DCS target chamber LLE’s Target Area System for the Dynamic Compression Sector (DCS) was installed at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) located at Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago. The system includes a target chamber, […]
2017: Shown here is Rory Hamilton working on the commissioning of an x-ray detection system An x-ray detection system (XDS) has been modified to nondestructively measure the pressure of DT fuel inside a target just prior to a shot. The XDS comprises three primary components: a high-resolution, dual-axes imaging system for repeatable, accurate target positioning; […]
2017: Sandia National Laboratories and LLE entered into a collaboration to test the scaling of magnetized liner inertial fusion (MagLIF) over a range of absorbed energy of the order of 1 kJ on OMEGA to 500 kJ on Sandia’s Pulsed-Power Facility (Z machine). This work is being funded with a two-year, $3.8M award from the […]
2017: The University of Rochester is leading a seven-institution collaboration that promises to significantly broaden human understanding of “extreme matter”—matter that exists under pressures far higher than either on or inside Earth. The collaboration, with local principal investigators Profs. Pierre Gourdain, Gilbert “Rip” Collins, and Dustin Trail, includes Cornell, Michigan, Idaho State, Iowa, Princeton, and […]
2017: Dr. E. Michael Campbell was named as the new Director of the Laboratory for Laser Energetics on 1 October 2017. Dr. Campbell is an internationally known expert in inertial fusion, high-energy-density physics, high-power lasers and their applications, and advanced energy technologies including Generation IV nuclear fission reactors and biofuels. He has won numerous awards […]
2016: Optical Manufacturing Process Engineer, John Spaulding, and Coating Operator, Justin Foster, are shown installing an optic on a new prototype stage built to support research and development work on glancing-angle–deposition (GLAD) coatings. The deposition system is designed to allow for growth of an oriented, birefringent film structure in stripes across an optical surface, and […]
2016: A narrowband crystal imaging system was used to perform x-ray radiography of OMEGA cryogenic capsule implosions (see image above). A 20-ps, 1.5-kJ OMEGA EP laser pulse was used to irradiate a Si x-ray backlighter target located inside the OMEGA target chamber. This configuration made it possible to measure the x-ray absorption of the cold […]
2016: Dr. Michael Rosenberg was selected to receive the prestigious Marshall Rosenbluth Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis given by the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics. The award citation states “for first experimental demonstration of the importance of kinetic and multi-ion effects on fusion rates in a wide class of inertial confinement fusion implosions, […]
