The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded Colorado State University’s Center for Advanced Lasers and Extreme Photonics $12.5 million to expand work on ALEPH, one of the world’s most powerful lasers. The center is directed by Jorge Rocca, University Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics.

The CSU team obtained two of the 10 grants announced this month by DOE’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences for LaserNetUS, a ten-node network of facilities operating ultra-powerful lasers across North America. DOE created the network to increase scientists’ access to ultra-high power laser research technology to advance science, support industry, and help reestablish the U.S.’s leading position in high-intensity laser research.

LaserNetUS includes CSU’s Advanced Beam Laboratory, home of ALEPH, an ultrafast, petawatt-class laser system developed at CSU. Petawatt lasers are the most powerful lasers on the planet, generating a million billion watts to produce extreme conditions found in the center of stars. A petawatt is a quadrillion watts, or a 1 followed by 15 zeros.

CSU has already hosted 30 LaserNet user experiments. The new funding will extend the university’s role as one of the leading facilities in the LaserNetUS program for the next three years. It will also support an upgrade of ALEPH to increase its capabilities to conduct research in fundamental science and in important applications. These include laser-driven fusion energy, a very promising source for the generation of clean, safe, and practically inexhaustible energy.

CSU plans to upgrade its high power laser research capabilities through the construction of a new facility at the foothills campus in partnership with Marvel Fusion, a fusion energy company.