Fusion center comes to University

he University has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy to host a new fusion science center. Riccardo Betti and David Meyerhofer, professors of mechanical engineering and physics and astronomy, will oversee the project, which will make use of the new ultra-high-intensity laser beam lines currently under construction at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics. The $5.5 million facility will be the only one in the world suitable for the experiments.

The new center, in conjunction with the newly enhanced Omega laser, will allow the University to continue at the cutting edge of fusion science by making possible new experiments, such as modeling the very young universe, understanding the quantum world, and studying relativistic laser-matter interactions.

The center, officially named the Fusion Center for Extreme States of Matter and Fast Ignition Physics, will use a new method to achieve fusion. Currently, facilities like the University's Omega laser, the most powerful laser in the world, produce fusion by striking a small pellet of hydrogen with laser beams that use 100 times as much power in a billionth of a second as the entire nation's power grid. The laser both compresses and heats the pellet, producing fusion. Scientists in the new center will explore what happens when the "heating" and "compression" components are separated by firing on the pellet twice with lasers of different power and duration.

"We'll likely be able to achieve energy densities far greater than even the very core of the sun, learn much about how matter itself behaves under such conditions, and explore a promising path toward thermonuclear fusion energy production," Betti says.

"The center will be of mutual benefit to LLE and the exceptional scholars across the nation that are part of this center," says Robert McCrory, director of the Laboratory for Laser Energetics. "The quest for fusion energy will be enhanced by this center."

The center at Rochester, one of two planned in the country, will involve participation by MIT, General Atomics, the University of California at San Diego, Ohio State University, UCLA, and the University of Texas at Austin, as well as collaboration with the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration programs at Rochester and at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

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