Lasers

New world record for Thales lasers at ELI-NP

20 Apr 2023

On April 13, 2023, the most powerful laser system in the world, designed, developed, installed by Thales at ELI- NP research center in Magurele, Romania, for its partner the IFIN-HH – Horia Hulubei National institute for R&D in Physics and Nuclear Engineering, and jointly operated by Thales and ELI –NP teams, has focused for the first time in the world 10 petawatt laser pulses on solid targets marking an important milestone in laser plasma physics.

Green energy: what if fusion wasn't an illusion?

07 Dec 2022

Who doesn’t dream about it? A cheap, inexhaustible energy source, with no waste or radioactive emissions. This is the promise of a unique laser-based inertial confinement fusion (ICF) process developed by German start-up Marvel Fusion. The process requires the use of ultrapowerful lasers — and Thales is one of the only companies in the world able to supply them.

Perseverance celebrates first birthdayand fires one millionth laser shot on Mars

18 Feb 2022

One year ago almost to the day, on the evening of 18 February 2021, the Mars 2020 mission’s Perseverance rover landed in Jezero Crater, carrying with it the French-U.S. SuperCam, a greatly enhanced version of the ChemCam instrument already operating on the NASA MSL mission’s Curiosity rover on Mars since August 2012. The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and a consortium of French research laboratories with the IRAP – Astrophysics and Planetology Research Institute (CNRS/CNES/Paul Sabatier University Toulouse III) as science lead, developed both instruments jointly. SuperCam and ChemCam have now fired one million laser shots between them on Mars.

The exploration of Mars: taking the next steps

19 Feb 2021

Cutting-edge laser technology from Thales on board the new Mars rover is set to help discover whether there was past life on the planet.

Laser-plasma technology: the future of particle acceleration

14 Jan 2021

Research into particle acceleration might just be on the threshold of a revolution. In the ongoing quest to understand the universe, humankind needs new tools to accelerate particles to even higher speeds so we can delve further into the infinitesimally small building blocks of matter and uncover new mysteries. The problem is that conventional particle accelerators rely on increasingly vast structures to achieve higher energy levels. Particle acceleration based on laser-plasma interaction is therefore a particularly compelling alternative.

ELI-NP is now ready to welcome world scientists!

27 Nov 2019

The most powerful laser system in the world developed and installed by Thales in Romania with the capacity to deliver pulses with the record power level of 10 petawatts, was formally accepted on October 11, 2019 by our Customer, the National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering Horia Hulubei (IFIN-HH).

World record for Thales Laser Tech !

20 Mar 2019

The Extreme Light Infrastructure for Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) project in Romania recently reached on March 20, 2019 a significant milestone: the ultra-high intensity laser system developed by Thales has successfully generated its first pulses at a peak power level of 10 petawatts (PW) equivalent to 1016 watts : 10.9PW, 327] at 1 shot/min compressed in a pulse just 22.3 femtoseconds long to be precise.

2019 Nobel Prize in Physics for Gerard Mourou’s research work

15 Dec 2018