MTW Laser
The MTW Laser is a versatile platform that combines a hybrid glass–OPCPA (optical parametric chirped-pulse–amplification) laser delivering picosecond pulses with an all-OPCPA line producing femtosecond pulses.
Laser Systems
Advanced Lasers
LLE is a leader in laser innovation, powering breakthroughs in fusion, high-energy-density physics, laboratory basic science, and frontier science. Home to the flagship OMEGA and OMEGA EP laser systems, LLE’s state-of-the-art facilities drive scientific discovery, support national priorities, and inspire collaboration across the global research community.
The MTW and MTW-OPAL facilities bridge the gap between the small-scale single-user lasers and large-scale national-user laser facilities (e.g., OMEGA, OMEGA EP, and eventually NSF OPAL) at the University of Rochester’s LLE.
By bridging this gap, these facilities create an R&D ecosystem capable of developing innovative ideas from a proof-of-principle demonstration to implementation at scale, thereby offering a unique and cost-effective environment for educating scientists and engineers leading to a talented technical workforce, impactful science, and innovative technologies for the nation.
Omega Laser Facility
Laser System
OMEGA
The OMEGA Laser System is a state-of-the-art, 60-beam system that delivers ultra-precise pulses up to 30,000 joules of energy onto minuscule targets in a billionth of a second.
As the largest and most effective university-based high-energy-density target-irradiation system in the world, OMEGA drives breakthrough research in nuclear science and inertial confinement fusion, paving the way for innovations that could one day harness the power of the sun on Earth. This national asset not only advances cutting-edge discovery but also serves as a dynamic educational platform, inspiring and training the next generation of scientific innovators.
Laser System
OMEGA EP
The OMEGA EP Laser System broadens LLE’s high-energy-density research capabilities with four National Ignition Facility (NIF)-scale, frequency-tripled beamlines. By offering both short- and long-pulse operations and advanced diagnostic tools such as x-ray backlighting, OMEGA EP powers a wide range of studies in inertial confinement fusion, laser–matter interactions, and high-energy-density physics, including integrated experiments with the OMEGA Laser System. OMEGA EP not only drives breakthrough scientific discovery but also provides valuable training opportunities for future leaders in the field.
Multi-Terawatt (MTW) Laser Facility
Serving as a mid-scale test bed for future multi-petawatt systems, MTW drives innovation in laser science while providing hands-on training for graduate students and early-career researchers—helping to cultivate the next generation of leaders in high-power laser research providing diagnostic innovation to support other facilities.
MTW Target Chamber
The MTW Facility delivers output pulse energies up to 100 J with pulse durations from 500 fs to 2.8 ns for studying high-energy density physics and developing short-pulse laser technologies and experimental target diagnostics. This facility now provides hands-on training through experimental campaigns that support graduate student research, develop early-career scientists, and provide diagnostic innovation to support the larger facilities in the NNSA Complex.
MTW-OPAL
MTW-OPAL will provide a new mid-scale petawatt laser facility, which will enable fundamental research in areas of high-field physics, laser-based secondary sources (THz, x-rays, charged particles), high-energy density physics, and directed energy.
The facility is designed to advance novel science while providing a hands-on training for graduate students, engineers, and technicians—establishing a facility for short-pulse laser-enabled science education addressing a national need.
MTW-OPAL Laser
An optical-parametric amplifier line (OPAL) pumped by the MTW laser was designed as a midscale prototype to produce 0.5-PW pulses with technologies scalable to tens of petawatts. Technology choices made for MTW-OPAL were guided by the longer-term goal of two full-scale OPAL’s pumped by OMEGA EP beamlines to produce two 25-PW beams collocated with kilojoule−nanosecond ultraviolet beams.
MTW-OPAL achieved first light in 2020 with 7.5-J, 20-fs (0.3-PW) pulses and now is the foundation for the MTW-OPAL Facility.
MTW-OPAL Target Chamber
The MTW-OPAL target area was designed to be highly-customizable to enable light-matter interaction experiments over a large experimental parameter space. The chamber will enable experiments in back-filled, low density atomic and molecular gases, supersonic gas jets, and solids to offer a large range of target densities, propagation distances (1 mm to 10 m), focusing geometries, and laser intensities. As such, this facility provides a flexible foundation for experiments.
FLUX Laser
The Fourth generation Laser for Ultrabroadband eXperiments (FLUX) was conceived to demonstrate the mitigation of laser-plasma instabilities and the technologies necessary for a next generation broadband high-energy density facility. The enabling technology for FLUX where a novel optical parametric amplifier and sum-frequency generation that deliver broadband, incoherent ultraviolet laser pulses from a single aperture.
A fiber-based front end seeds an incoherent, broadband signal into a sequence of noncollinear OPA (NOPA) stages. A subsequent collinear OPA (COPA) seeded by the NOPA signal output (idler removed) amplifies the broadband infrared (1\omega) signal and produces an associated broadband idler wave with large wavelength differences that span a large relative bandwidth (\delta \omega/\omega ≥ 1.5%). The combined signal and idler at 1054 nm are then frequency converted to 351 nm by sum-frequency generation with a monochromatic 2\omega pulse. The resulting 150 J pulse is ultimately transported to the OMEGA target chamber for laser-plasma instability studies.
NSF OPAL
Designed as an open-access hub for a broad range of scientific communities, the proposed NSF OPAL Laser Facility will foster collaborative research, innovation, and hands-on training for the next generation of scientists—driving discoveries with wide-reaching societal impact.
At its core, the facility features two 25-petawatt lasers that exceed current peak power limits, enabling studies of extreme physical conditions relevant to astrophysics, planetary science, quantum electrodynamics, and laser-driven nuclear physics. These lasers utilize optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification—a method developed at LLE and recognized by the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics—to generate powerful, ultrashort pulses.