World’s most powerful laser facility to receive £85mln funding
Vulcan 20-20, touted as the most powerful laser in the world, will be constructed with £85mln from UK Research and Innovation, advancing plasma physics.
Central Laser Facility Scientist Margaret Notley inspects Vulcan's Target Area Petawatt ~1 metre mirror.
© Science and Technology Facilities Council’sThe upgraded Vulcan 20-20 laser will be 100 times brighter than its predecessor, and a million, billion, billion times brighter than the Sahara Desert’s brightest sunlight. It has a wide range of uses, predominantly in plasma physics.
The Central Laser Facility (CLF) based at the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in South Oxfordshire will construct the Vulcan 20-20.
The Vulcan 20-20 laser is called so because it will generate a main laser beam with an energy output of 20 Petawatts (PW), alongside eight high energy beams with an output of up to 20KJ. This is a 20-fold increase in power, which the facility expect will make it the most powerful laser in the world.
The CLF reports that the Vulcan laser has been oversubscribed with applications since its opening in 1997.
The Vulcan 20-20 upgrade programme is expected to take six-years to complete and will create a range of new jobs for scientists at different stages of their careers, as well as designers, engineers, and technicians.
The Vulcan 20-20 laser will help better understand various scientific areas, from astrophysical phenomena like supernovae and solar flares to the potential of laser fusion as a clean energy source.
Professor Mark Thomson, Executive Chair of STFC and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Champion for Infrastructure, says, ‘The Central Laser Facility has been a driving force behind discoveries that have advanced our understanding of diverse areas from the fundamental properties of matter under extreme conditions to the formation of stars and planets’.
More like this...
