Laboratory for Laser Energetics

National Nuclear Security Administration Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty said the University’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics plays a crucial role in advancing research vital to maintaining the safety of America’s nuclear security enterprise.

Dean for research in Arts, Sciences & Engineering since 2011, Williams stepped down on July 1 to return full time to his research.

Using lasers at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, researchers have created a superionic water ice, identifying and recording the ice’s atomic structure for the first time and changing our understanding of ice giant planets like Uranus and Neptune.

For the first time, researchers at Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) have found a way to turn a liquid metal into a plasma and to observe the temperature where a liquid under high-density conditions crosses over to a plasma state.

One of the biggest challenges to controlled nuclear fusion has been the lack of accurate models to predict increased fusion energy yields. Now a Rochester team of more than 50 scientists has used “big data” to triple fusion yields.

Two high school seniors have been designated as Scholars in the prestigious Regeneron Science Talent Search for research they carried out last summer at the University's Laboratory for Laser Energetics.

In addition to their Nobel noteworthiness, Rochester researchers continue to develop new ways to apply lasers in research, medicine, and everyday life in 2018. Because frankly, we’re big on lasers.

Today's Rochester researchers are taking science developed at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics to develop the next generation high-power lasers and to better understand the fundamentals of high-energy-density physics. 

Three scholars with ties to the University of Rochester received the Nobel Prize in their fields at the 2018 ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden. The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to both Donna Strickland ’89 (PhD) and her graduate advisor and former senior scientist Gérard Mourou, for work that paved the way for more compact and precise high-intensity laser systems. In addition, Paul Romer, a former assistant professor in the Department of Economics, has been awarded a shared Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in endogenous growth theory.

Rochester researchers are part of an international collaboration of scientists that has, for the first time, detected extremely high-energy gamma rays from one of the most powerful star systems in the Milky Way.