Logos Technologies and Universities Partner on High-Energy Laser

Aug. 15, 2014 – Washington State University (Pullman, Wash., U.S.A.) announced last week the appointment of Logos Technologies (Fairfax, Virg., U.S.A.) and the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (Rochester, N.Y., U.S.A) as partners to design, build and install a high-energy laser for research on shock waves. The laser will be installed at Washington State’s Dynamic Compression Sector at the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory.

Logos, a defense and energy contractor, will lead the project that will ultimately provide a frequency-tripled glass laser to produce high-pressure, short-duration shock waves. The laser produces these shock waves via coupling of tunable, high-energy X-ray beams to state-of-the-art shock wave drivers to enable real-time atomic-scale investigation of materials undergoing extreme dynamic compression. The laser will deliver 100 joules of energy at nanosecond pulse frequencies. The amount of the contract was undisclosed.

Logos will develop the software to control the laser, which will enable a single operator to align, maintain and fire the laser, making it easier to control than other systems with similar performance and scale.

“This partnership offers a valuable and diverse set of skills that will make this kind of advanced laser-driven capability more accessible to researchers,” said Professor Robert McCrory, director of the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics. “It will enable research in many other areas.” The laser will become available for national and international scientific research in late 2016.