LLNL's Scientific Expertise Highlighted at Plasma Physics Meeting

The breadth and depth of scientific research conducted at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was on full display at the 2024 meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Plasma Physics, held Oct. 7-11 in Atlanta.

Consortium with Minority Serving Institutions Delivers Opportunities for HEDS Students

The Consortium for High Energy Density Science, formed to expand and diversify the pipeline of students in high energy density science, had much to celebrate during its annual meeting at LLNL.

LLNL’s Tammy Ma Shares Fusion Energy Vision with TED

What would you do with the largest laser in the world? That’s the question LLNL physicist Tammy Ma posed to the audience on the main stage at the influential TED conference held in April in Vancouver.

Jupiter Laser Facility Gets a Reboot

JLF helps to “deliver what we need for stockpile stewardship and Discovery Science,” NIF & Photon Science Principal Associate Director Jeff Wisoff said during the facility’s reopening celebration.

New NIF Experimental Platform Will Probe Warm Dense Matter

Warm dense matter (WDM) is present in the interior of planets and some stars and is also produced in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments. A new NIF platform will provide unique, high-quality experimental data to guide the complex models required to simulate the properties of WDM.

Bringing the Literature on Laser-Plasma Interactions Up to Date

For many years, LLNL physicist Pierre Michel, an internationally known expert on the physics of laser-plasma interactions (LPI), saw a gap in his field’s literature: the lack of an up-to-date textbook on LPI relevant to the kind of experiments conducted on NIF.

National Academies Report on HED Science Includes LLNL Contributions

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has released a report that identifies key challenges and questions facing the field of high energy density (HED) science and facilities like NIF during the upcoming decade.

A Shot Like No Other

The following is an excerpt from an article by Suzanne Storar in the January/February 2022 issue of Science & Technology Review.

Researchers Use NIF for Deep Dive into Interiors of Red Dwarfs

Red dwarfs are the most abundant stars in the Milky Way, making up 70 percent of all stars.

Breaking the strongest chemical bonds with laser shock compression

New thermodynamic data on warm dense nitrogen might help unlock some of the mysteries regarding the behavior of hydrogen molecules in the early stages of ICF implosions at NIF.

Researchers Focus on Tantalum’s Strength from Ambient to Extreme Conditions

Researchers from LLNL, LANL, and Sandia teamed to better understand the strength of tantalum using conditions accessed by NIF and Sandia’s Z machine.

NIF and JLF User Groups Cite HED Science Successes Amid Pandemic

At this year’s meeting of the NIF and JLF user groups, facility leaders cited a number of HED science successes amid the challenges of the pandemic.

NIF Helps Unravel Mysteries of Heat Conduction in Turbulent Galaxy-Cluster Plasmas

New research just published in Science Advances details how an international team of scientists turned to NIF to help unravel the inner workings of heat conduction in clusters of galaxies—the largest structures in the universe.

LLNL Constructing High-Power Laser for New Experimental Facility at SLAC

LLNL’s decades of leadership in developing high-energy lasers is being tapped to provide a key component of a major upgrade to SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory’s Linac Coherent Light Source.

Video: ‘The Threshold of Ignition’

In a video, LLNL’s Kim Budil, Jeff Wisoff, and Brad Wallin discuss how NIF’s historic 1.3 megajoule milestone is important for science and our nation’s nuclear and energy security.

Models and Simulations Help Map NIF’s Path to Ignition

Inertial confinement fusion researchers don’t design and carry out experiments on NIF without the guidance of sophisticated computational models and simulations informed by diagnostic data and analysis of previous experiments.

LLNL, ELI-Beamlines Reach Deal to Ramp Up L3-HAPLS Performance

LLNL and ELI-Beamlines in the Czech Republic have reached a major agreement that will build on the relationship between the two organizations and ramp up performance of the L3-High-Repetition-Rate Advanced Petawatt Laser System (L3-HAPLS) to its full design capabilities.

Ironing Out the Interiors of Exoplanets

LLNL scientists and collaborators have used NIF’s lasers to experimentally determine the high-pressure melting curve and structural properties of pure iron up to 1,000 GPa (nearly 10 million atmospheres), three times the pressure of Earth’s inner core and nearly four times greater pressure than any previous experiments.

NIF Diagnostics Played Key Role in Fusion Milestone

The National Ignition Facility (NIF)’s highly specialized and sophisticated measuring instruments known as diagnostics were integral to the record-setting inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiment that produced more than 1.3 million joules (MJ) of fusion energy.

NIF&PS Scientists Earn Early, Mid-Career Honors

LLNL's seventh annual early and mid-career awards program included five scientists whose work has made a significant impact on NIF & Photon Science research.