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Lasers and Optical S&T
Two LLNL researchers named to Optica’s 2024 class of senior members
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers Paul Armstrong and Brent Stuart have been named senior members of Optica. The professional society’s senior membership status recognizes members with more than 10 years of professional experience in optics or an optics-related field. The 2024 class joins a distinguished group of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs…
Research confirms importance of symmetry in pre-ignition fusion experiments
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have retrospectively confirmed that implosion asymmetry was a major aspect for fusion experiments before achieving ignition for the first time at the Lab’s National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world’s most energetic laser. The findings were recently detailed in a Nature Communications paper titled “The impact of…
Fusion Power Associates honors Bruno Van Wonterghem
Bruno Van Wonterghem, operations manager at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL) National Ignition Facility (NIF), was awarded a 2024 Distinguished Career Award by Fusion Power Associates (FPA). FPA board of directors recognized Van Wonterghem “for his decades of tenacious dedication to scientific and operational excellence in bringing both the LLNL Beamlet and…
LLNL’s Tammy Ma shares fusion energy vision with TED
What would you do with the largest laser in the world? That’s the question Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) physicist Tammy Ma posed to the audience on the mainstage at the influential TED conference held in April in Vancouver. In the talk, which was publicly released today, Ma shared her answer: bringing about a world powered by laser-based fusion energy,…
LLNL researchers uncover key to resolving long-standing ICF hohlraum drive deficit
A team of researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has made advancements in understanding and resolving the long-standing "drive-deficit" problem in indirect-drive inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments. This discovery could pave the way for more accurate predictions and improved performance in fusion experiments at the National Ignition Facility…
Two LLNL physicists honored for international collaboration
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) physicists Hye-Sook Park and George Swadling, along with Anna Grassi of France’s Sorbonne University and former Lawrence Fellow Frederico Fiuza of Portugal’s Técnico Lisboa, received the 2024 Lev D. Landau and Lyman Spitzer Jr. Award for Outstanding Contributions to Plasma Physics. The award is jointly sponsored by the Plasma…
Celebrating ignition through art at City Center Bishop Ranch
Visitors to City Center Bishop Ranch in San Ramon can now learn about LLNL’s historic fusion ignition achievement while they shop and dine. “Bringing Star Power to Earth,” a new art installation on the exterior of the center, tells the story of ignition through nine banners measuring 23 feet tall. The centerpiece is the ignition artwork that LLNL used in the first…
Advancements in Z-pinch fusion: New insights from plasma pressure profiles
Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have reported advancements in understanding plasma pressure profiles within flow-stabilized Z-pinch fusion, a candidate for achieving net gain fusion energy in a compact device. In collaboration with the University of California San Diego (UCSD), the University of Washington, Sandia National Laboratories and…
When experiments go quiet: maintaining the National Ignition Facility
For two weeks last April, the lasers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility stopped firing. Experiments may have been on pause, but the facility was anything but quiet. “To do world-class science, you need a world-class facility. And you can’t just maintain that facility, you must anticipate problems and seek out improvements,” said Stanley…
DOE, LLNL take center stage at inaugural artificial-intelligence expo
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Director Kim Budil and other LLNL staff joined Department of Energy (DOE) Deputy Secretary David Turk, National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator Jill Hruby, DOE Under Secretary for Science and Innovation Geraldine Richmond, DOE Director of the Office of Critical and Emerging Technologies Helena Fu, U.S…
Jupiter Laser Facility gets a reboot
Fifty years ago, the first laser, Janus, was installed in Building 174 (renamed the Jupiter Laser Facility in 2006) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Additional lasers, more than 100 Ph.D.s granted time on the system and thousands of international users later, the Jupiter Laser Facility (JLF) celebrated its grand reopening Thursday after a four-year refurbishment,…
Machine learning optimizes high-power laser experiments
Commercial fusion energy plants and advanced compact radiation sources may rely on high-intensity high-repetition rate lasers, capable of firing multiple times per second, but humans could be a limiting factor in reacting to changes at these shot rates. Applying advanced computing to this problem, a team of international scientists from Lawrence Livermore National…
Comic book tells the story of ignition
A new comic book from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) illustrator John Jett tells the story of how a Lab experiment at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) made history. This 2024 issue of Ignition is an exciting sequel to Jett’s award-winning comic book, released in 2018, that made the scientific research conducted at NIF accessible to a broad range of…
Using NIF to study the sluggish pace of star formation
Editor’s note: The principal mission of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) is to support the National Nuclear Security Administration’s science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program — and with the achievement of fusion ignition in 2022 at NIF, LLNL is further exploring the possible use of nuclear fusion as a future energy source…
Supercomputer simulations of super-diamond suggest a path to its creation
Diamond is the strongest material known. However, another form of carbon has been predicted to be even tougher than diamond. The challenge is how to create it on Earth. The eight-atom body-centered cubic (BC8) crystal is a distinct carbon phase: not diamond, but very similar. BC8 is predicted to be a stronger material, exhibiting a 30% greater resistance to compression…
Lab employees recognized with Secretary of Energy’s Honor Awards
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) employees, participating in five project teams, recently earned Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary’s Honor Awards. In addition, Karin King of the Livermore Field Office was honored for her role in the Leadership in Climate Action Team. Representing some of the highest internal, non-monetary recognition that DOE employees and…
New study reveals surprising behavior of iron under extreme conditions
Iron is one of the world’s most abundant elements and a primary component of the Earth's core. Understanding the behavior of iron under extreme conditions, such as ultra-high pressures and temperatures, has implications for the science of geology and the Earth’s evolution. In a study conducted by a team led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. researchers combined…
LLNL-led team receives DOE Award to establish inertial fusion energy hub
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded a four-year, $16 million project to a multi-institutional team led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to accelerate inertial fusion energy (IFE) science and technology. This effort will be carried out by the newly established IFE Science and Technology Accelerated Research for Fusion Innovation and Reactor…
Engineering divisions provide expertise and support fusion energy’s future
In the 2000s, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) engineer Steve Hunter was asked to work on the concept for an Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) power plant, not because of any laser or electronics knowledge that he has, but due to his firearms expertise. He needed to figure out how to inject a stream of targets into the target chamber, so that a constant source of…
Watching aluminum’s reaction under extreme pressure
Understanding laser material interactions has applications that include inertial confinement fusion, material research and equation of state studies. Laser ablation, and specifically increasing the pressure that can be achieved from a laser system, is a longstanding topic of scientific research with implications ranging from damage in layered devices like solar cells and…
