14 DAY TRIAL // Officials with the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) announce that they have just been awarded with a $45 million (€33 million) grant for designing and delivering a state-of-the-art laser installation to Europe.
The advanced instrument will be delivered to the European Union for installation on its Extreme Light Infrastructure Beamlines facility (ELI-Beamlines), which is currently being built in Dolni Brezany near Prague, the capital city of the Czech Republic.
LLNL will develop and assemble the all-new powerful laser through a spin-off company called Lawrence Livermore National Security LLC (LLNS). All necessary funds were received just a couple of months ago, and the project is now steamrolling ahead.
According to LLNL project investigators, the new laser will be more powerful than any other device of its type in the world. The ELI-Beamlines collaboration will use it to advance medical imaging, particle acceleration, homeland security and quantum physics research.
The European Union last year organized an international tendering procedure, and LLNL was able to secure the contract due to its vast experience with advanced laser systems. This experience was acquired by fulfilling national security missions on behalf of the DOE.
The High repetition-rate Advanced Petawatt Laser System (HAPLS) will be capable of producing a peak power level exceeding one petawatt (10^15 watts). By comparison, this is one 174th of the total power level the Sun delivers to the Earth, or 1,000,000,000,000,000 watts.
“We are proud and excited now to be working with LLNL, which is an internationally recognized center of excellence in high performance lasers,” explains the director of the Institute of Physics at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Dr. Jan Ridky.
“LLNL was selected by the ELI Beamlines project through a rigorous evaluation process and will develop a world-leading laser system that will be at the heart of the ELI Beamlines user facility,” the expert adds.
“It is evidence that ELI is a European facility, but with a real global dimension. Placement of this contract is a significant milestone as we have now committed over half of the project budget, a tangible demonstration of our progress,” Ridky concludes.