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The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is home to the world’s largest laser system, the National Ignition Facility (NIF). The NIF with its 192 beam lines and over 40,000 optics has been an engine of innovation for lasers and optics technologies for the last couple of decades. The Lasers and Optics intellectual property portfolio is the culmination of the many groundbreaking developments in high energy, high peak power and ultrashort pulse laser system design and operation, including technologies related to Laser Diodes, Fiber & Disk Lasers, Compact Telescopes, High Damage Threshold Gratings, High Power Optical Components and their Fabrication and Coating Techniques. The thrust of the research and development at the NIF has been to realize novel approaches for laser systems, optical components and their applications that are more compact and higher efficiency while reliably delivering ever higher energy and peak power capabilities required in the furtherance of LLNL’s missions in Stockpile Stewardship and High Energy Density Science.

Portfolio News and Multimedia

Candis Jackson analyzing HELD grating with AFM
Livermore researchers collect three awards among the top 100 industrial inventions

R&D World Magazine recently announced their 2022 award winners. LLNL researchers received three awards, which include Tailored Glass by Direct Ink Writing, novel compression gratings that enable a new class of high-energy laser systems and a 3D printing feedstock known as Energy Inks that can print a functioning battery.

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CAL Computed Axial Lithography 3
NASA funds LLNL to demonstrate 'replicator' 3D printer to produce cartilage in space

NASA's funding will enable LLNL and Kentucky-based space life sciences company, Space Tango to mature prototypes of the “replicator” technology — a ultrafast 3D printer co-developed by LLNL and the University of California, Berkeley — for bioprinting in microgravity on the International Space Station.

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curing kinetics of the nanocomposite silica glass resin
New laser-based volumetric additive manufacturing method can 3D print glass in seconds

Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley have demonstrated the ability to 3D-print microscopic objects in silica glass, part of an effort to produce delicate, layer-less optics that can be built in seconds

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Lasers and Optics Technologies

Keywords

Lasers and Optics

Laser peening induces deep compressive stress, which significantly extends the service lifetime over any conventional treatment
Enhanced Material Shock Using Spatiotemporal Laser Pulse Formatting

This invention proposes using a pulse laser configured to generate laser pulses and a controller for controlling operation of the pulse laser. The controller is further configured to control the pulse laser to cause the pulse laser to generate at least one of the laser pulses with a spatiotemporally varying laser fluence over a duration of at least one of the laser pulses. The spatiotemporally…

creation of ultra-high energy density matter by an intense laser pulse
Enhancement of Laser Material Processing via Modulation of Laser Light Intensity
Livermore Lab researchers have developed two new methods for improving the efficiency of laser drilling. The first method is based on multi-pulse laser technology. Two synchronized free-running laser pulses from a tandem-head Nd:YAG laser and a gated CW laser are capable of drilling through 1/8-in-thick stainless-steel targets at a standoff distance of 1 m without gas-assist. The combination of a…
Laser Peening
Zig Zag Nd Laser

LLNL’s system consists of one or more flashlamp-pumped Nd:glass zig-zag amplifiers, a very low threshold stimulated-Brillouin-scattering (SBS) phase conjugator system, and a free-running single frequency Nd:YLF master oscillator.

nuclear reactor
Safe, Energy-Efficient Surface Contamination Removal, Retrieval and Analysis

The new LLNL technique works by transiently removing and trapping concrete or rock surface material, so that contaminants are confined in a manner that is easy to isolate and remove. Our studies suggest that 10 m2 of surface could be processed per hour. The technique easily scales to more surface/hr.