Science & Technology

Super-heating lasers to aid fusion research

By T.K. Randall
November 14, 2015

Image: Preamplifier at the National Ignition Facility in California
Credit: Damien Jemison / Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory / CC BY-SA 3.0 (adapted) Lasers have the potential to heat certain types of materials up to tens of millions of degrees in less than a million millionth of a second - that is at least according to theoretical physicists from Imperial College London who have come up with an extremely effective new super-heating mechanism.

Capable of producing temperatures hotter than the center of the sun, this remarkable new method could prove particularly useful in nuclear fusion energy research and has the potential to heat materials more than 100 times faster than anything that has ever been attempted before.

"It's a completely unexpected result," said the paper's lead author Dr Arthur Turrell."One of the problems with fusion research has been getting the energy from the laser in the right place at the right time. This method puts energy straight into the ions."

Unlike nuclear fission which produces dangerous radioactive waste, nuclear fusion can produce large amounts of clean energy from hydrogen - the most abundant element in the universe.

Getting it to work effectively has long remained one of the most sought-after goals in science.

Source: Phys.org

Tags: Laser, Fusion