High-power laser being constructed for a new experimental facility

A key component of a major upgrade to the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) will be provided by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

One of the world's most powerful petawatt (quadrillion- watt) laser systems will be built by the Advanced Photon Technologies (APT) program over the next several years.

The LCLS X-ray free-electron laser will pair with the new laser to advance the understanding of high-energy density.

The characteristics of matter at extreme temperatures and pressures can be probed by using optical lasers coupled to X-ray laser pulse from LCLS. The first observations of diamond rain, under conditions thought to exist deep inside giant icy planets like Uranus and Neptune, have been produced by MEC experiments.

Increasing calls for the United States to re-establish world-class leadership in high-power laser technology are motivating the MEC-U.

The University of Rochester and the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) are collaborating with the SLAC to design and build a new underground facility. Two new experimental areas containing a target chamber and a suite of dedicated diagnostics will be fed into by the rep-rated laser and high-energy kilojoule laser developed by LLE.

The LCLS can deliver 120 X-ray pulse a second, each lasting a few hundredths of a second. A concurrent upgrade dubbed LCLS-II will deliver a million pulse a second in an almost continuous X-ray beam that, on average, will be 10,000 times brighter and will double the X-ray energy previously attainable.

The new high-power lasers being designed by Livermore and Rochester are world-leading in their own right.

The LCLS will become the U.S. flagship for high-tech research with the 10-Hz petawatt laser that we are building, along with LLE's long-pulse compression laser and the upgraded LCLS capabilities.

The United States will get a fundamentally new high-throughput HED capability for discovery science and national security research with the LCLS beamline.

The National Nuclear Security Administration is interested in partnering with the Office of Science to enhance the upgrade with additional high-energy long-pulse laser capabilities. Among the goals would be to improve scientists ability to predict the performance of next-generation stewardship-relevant materials in extreme environments; study the microphysics of inertial confinement fusion; and enable the study of larger volumes of high-atomic-number materials than previously possible.

HAPLS is very powerful.

Tom Spinka, project manager and chief scientist for the RRL, said that it will be a simplified and more energetic version of the High-Repetition-Rate Advanced Petawatt Laser System. The European Union's Extreme Light Infrastructure Beamlines facility in the Czech Republic is a key component of the world's first all-diode-pumped petawatt laser.

Spinka said the RRL will build on the work done on HAPLS.

The Scalable High-power Advanced Radiographic Capability, or SHArc, eliminates the lossy second stage of the HAPLS laser system.

The HAPLS laser at ELI-Beamlines will be ramping to its full design specifications in parallel with the development of the RRL for the MEC-U facility. A new high-energy Faraday rotator developed under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with Electro-Optics Technologies Inc. is one of the advanced laser technologies being developed by APT.

New physics can be enabled.

The new physics of the MEC is a core part of the strategy for developing next-generation high-average-power ultrafast lasers and enabling high rep-rate HED science. It is an exciting opportunity for the community.

Fry said that they are working with some of the leading laser laboratories in the world, as well as with world experts in experimental science, high-energy-density science, and the operation of the DOE Office of Science user.

LaserNetUS is a research network that is boosting access to high-intensity laser facilities at labs and universities across the country.

The Office of Science of the DOE approved the move from conceptual design to preliminary design and construction is expected to start in two years.

The team is led by Tang as the senior team lead; Spinka as project manager and chief scientist; Robert Plummer as project engineer; and Brendan Reagan as laser architect.

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