National Energetics and Ekspla awarded contract to build ten-petawatt laser system
A consortium led by National Energetics (Austin, TX), in partnership with Ekspla (Vilnius, Lithuania), has been awarded a contract in excess of $40 million to develop and install an ultra-intense laser system for the European Union’s Extreme Light Infrastructure Beamlines facility (ELI-Beamlines) in Dolní Břežany near Prague in the Czech Republic. The ELI-Beamlines facility represents an investment of nearly 7 billion Czech crowns (roughly $350 million) by the European Union and the Czech government.
The laser system will be capable of producing peak power in excess of 10 PW, making it the most powerful laser of its class in the world. It will be one of the four major beamlines at the new ELI-Beamlines facility that will allow novel research in areas such as plasma and high-energy-density physics, particle acceleration, and investigations into molecular, biomedical, and materials sciences.
National Energetics has years of experience building and using petawatt-class high-energy ultrafast laser systems, and Ekspla brings extensive experience in lasers and power-supply manufacturing. In addition to the two main consortium team members, Lawrence Livermore National Labs (LLNL; Livermore, CA) will be under a subcontract for technology support and to manufacture the specialized gratings; ELI-Beamlines will collaborate directly with the consortium on timing and controls; and Schott (Mainz, Germany) will supply the laser glass, which will be used in the large-aperture laser amplifiers.
"Placement of the 10 PW laser contract concludes a major period of the ELI-Beamlines project: now, the design is completed and the construction of all laser systems, the heart of the future facility, will have started," says professor Jan Ridky, director of the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. "We are very happy to find in the consortium -- led by National Energetics, in partnership with Ekspla -- a partner in development and delivery of one of the key technology blocks of the ELI-Beamlines facility. In the designed 10 PW laser, the facility will obtain a unique and powerful tool which will help European and world research community to essentially advance knowledge in ultra-high-field frontier physics."
The laser system will yield pulse energies in excess of 1.5 kJ and pulse widths of approximately 150 fs delivered at a repetition rate of one shot per minute. The system uses technologies developed in collaboration with the University of Texas (Austin, TX) for the previously deployed Texas Petawatt Laser in Austin, such as optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA) followed by high-energy amplification in glass-disc amplifiers using two types of laser glass.
Novel liquid-cooling technology developed at National Energetics will allow the system to operate at repetition rates 20 times faster than any other kilojoule-class disc laser of its class. The system will be assembled in Austin, Texas before delivery, installation and commissioning at ELI-Beamlines. The project is on a fast track for completion in 2017.
For more info, see: www.nationalenergetics.com and www.ekspla.com
Source: Curt Frederickson, VP sales and marketing, National Energetics; phone: 650-224-7865
Additional contact: Kestutis Jasiūnas, CEO, Ekspla; phone: +370 5 264 96 29
John Wallace | Senior Technical Editor (1998-2022)
John Wallace was with Laser Focus World for nearly 25 years, retiring in late June 2022. He obtained a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and physics at Rutgers University and a master's in optical engineering at the University of Rochester. Before becoming an editor, John worked as an engineer at RCA, Exxon, Eastman Kodak, and GCA Corporation.