The UK's first high-power laser that fires 100 pulses per second will be built at Queen's University Belfast, capable of generating X-rays, gamma rays, electrons, ions, and positrons on demand. Current high-power lasers fire at most once per second, making source optimisation take days and data acquisition hours. This new 10-terawatt system, operating at 100 hertz, will shrink those times to seconds—a thousand-fold speed-up. Without it, the UK risks falling behind European competitors who are already investing in similar systems. If successful, the facility will enable practical applications that laser-driven accelerators have so far failed to deliver. These include ultra-high-resolution biological imaging for medical diagnostics, nanoscale defect detection in manufacturing, radiography of thick objects for security scanning, and detection of sensitive nuclear materials. The ability to switch between particle types with simple adjustments gives researchers a versatile toolkit for probing matter at unprecedented scales—from biological to nuclear responses. This is an infrastructure and technology development project. It directly addresses a bottleneck in translating laser-plasma physics from laboratory demonstrations to real-world use, filling a specific gap in the UK's national laser capabilities.
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We propose to establish the UK's first high-power (10TW), high-repetition rate (100Hz) laser facility. The laser will be hosted within the Centre for Laser-Matter Interactions at Queen's University Belfast, an ideal environment which will allow it to operate as a user facility open to both public and private sector users. The facility will be designed to provide, in a compact and cost-effective arrangement, a varied range of secondary radiation and particle sources with unique characteristics, including ultra-short duration (from femtoseconds to picoseconds), small source size (~ microns), and ultra-high brightness. This high level of versatility and flexibility, where not only the beam parameters can be finely tuned, but the very nature of the particle or radiation can be selected with simple experimental adjustments (e.g. x-rays, gamma-rays, electrons, ions, and positrons) can only be achieved with laser-driven sources. The unique properties of these sources offer novel and disruptive possibilities in probing matter at unprecedented spatio-temporal scales, spanning biological, chemical, and nuclear responses. Applications with industrial and societal impact can be enabled in manufacturing, healthcare, homeland security by allowing, for example, ultra-high resolution biological imaging, nanoscale defect detection in materials, radiography of thick objects, and detection of strategically sensitive elements. However, despite their enormous potential, laser-driven accelerators have not yet found widespread applicative use. For an effective translation to practical applications, the main hurdle still to overcome is that of the repetition rate of these sources and, thus, of their average flux. Currently, high-power laser systems typically operate at a maximum repetition rates at the Hz level, which result in days-long runs for source optimisation and hour-long runs of data acquisition. These impractically long optimisation and acquisition times could be shortened a thousand-fold down to a matter of seconds if stable operation at the 100 Hz level could be achieved. The construction and operation of a high-repetition rate high-power laser facility is therefore a key enabler towards the widespread and impactful application of laser-driven radiation and particle sources. This requirement is recognised globally, being mentioned as a pivotal research and development need in several national and international roadmaps and strategic documents. In response to this identified need, several European countries are now investing in the development of high repetition rate laser systems. While he UK is investing significantly in new high power systems (e.g.,the PW EPAC system at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, designed to operate at 10 Hz, and SCAPA (5 Hz at 40 TW) at the University of Strathclyde), there is currently a gap in the provision of higher repetition rate , high-power laser pulses.As a consequence, and despite the world-leading expertise of the UK community in laser-plasma interactions, the UK thus risks falling behind on this central topic of technological and scientific development. This is a key demand also from several academic institutions, public sector organisations, and private companies in the UK, which have expressed strong interest in accessing a laser facility of this kind. We thus propose to address this need by establishing the first high-power and high-repetition rate laser facility in the UK. This facility will naturally complement other national facilities and will represent a focal point for R&D work on high rep-rate laser-driven sources and for day-one applications with disruptive impact in both the public and the private sector.
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