15-18 April 2013
The 2013 SPIE Optics and Optoelectronics Conference took place in Prague between 15 and 18 April 2013. More than 600 delegates gathered to discuss the latest advances in laser technology, photonics and applications ranging from inertial confinement fusion to medical imaging, from metamaterials to quantum information transfer.
In his welcoming address, Tomáš Hruda, Czech Vice-Minister for Science, highlighted the ELI Beamlines project as one of the world's most exciting laser projects of this decade and looked forward to its commissioning in 2015. ELI Beamlines will be the first of the ELI large scale facilities to be brought on line and will provide world-leading laser interaction capabilities for fundamental and applied research.
Following Mr Hruda, the first plenary lecture of the Symposium was given by Dr Ed Moses, Principal Associate Director, NIF and Photon Science from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Dr Moses gave a comprehensive update on the most recent progress on the lasers of the National Ignition Facility and highlighted the great performance of the NIF laser system as well as encouraging progress towards ignition of a Deuterium/Tritium fuel capsule. He ended his talk by underlining that the NIF facility is a world asset with beamtime available to the academic community for "blue skies" research in addition to the national security and fusion ignition campaigns.
Dr Ed Moses gives an update on progress at the National Ignition Facility in Californ
Laser hall at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), Lawrence Livermore
Later in the week, the HiPER Project held a two day "Laser Energy" workshop to discuss and review progress towards commercial energy production from laser-driven fusion. A busy week concluded with the HiPER Participants' Forum on Friday, 19th April .