The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a Mid-Scale Research Infrastructure (RI-1) Design Award for NSF-OPAL, which will be the world’s most powerful laser system once built. The current ~18 million in funding funding will support the design of two 25-petawatt lasers utilizing optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification, along with associated experimental and diagnostic systems. Four frontier science working groups have been formed that will help guide the scientific mission of NSF OPAL, these working groups and examples of flagship experiments include:
* Particle Acceleration and Advanced Light Sources Through dephasingless Laser Wakefield Acceleration, hundreds of GeV electron beams will be produced from NSF OPAL
* High-Field Physics and Quantum Electrodynamics At sufficiently high intensities, the very vacuum itself may behave as a nonlinear optic
* Laboratory Astrophysics and Planetary Physics NSF OPAL will create matter at the extreme conditions found in our universe, enabling us to study it in the lab
* Laser-Driven Nuclear Physics Nuclear reactions using laser driven triton beams enable the exploration of new fusion modalities
You can sign up for the email list at the following webpage https://nsf-opal.rochester.edu/contact/
Professor Dollar is a co-PI of the NSF OPAL project, and leads the Particle Acceleration and Advanced Light Sources Frontier Science Working Group.
