Constantin Haefner [Image: © Fraunhofer ILT, Aachen, Germany]
The 2020 High-brightness Sources and Light-driven Interactions Congress will be held in March in Prague, Czech Republic. The congress, which comprises three topical meetings—Compact (EUV and X-Ray) Light Sources, High-Intensity Lasers and High-Field Phenomena (HILAS), and Mid-Infrared Coherent Sources (MICS)—aims to inspire thoughtful discourse among leaders in the field as congress attendees discuss technical challenges and recent developments.
OPN spoke with Constantin Haefner, Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology (ILT), Germany, who is co-chairing HILAS, about his vision for the event in light of recent breakthroughs in laser intensity and repetition rate.
What is your background in this field?
I’ve been working on high-power laser technology for about 20 years. When I was at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), we worked on developing the most powerful high-intensity lasers, culminating with the petawatt laser system that we delivered to the ELI–Beamlines facility in Prague.
Recently, I became the director of Fraunhofer ILT, which is the leading European laser-technology research institute with close industry ties. At ILT, we work on cutting-edge high-power lasers and their applications in industry, medicine and science.
What recent developments will be addressed at the meeting?
Recent breakthroughs in technology allow energetic high-intensity lasers to run at rep rate. This allows the productivity and scientific-discovery rate to massively increase. This is key to stay competitive and move faster with developing new technologies and new applications.
The HILAS conference helps to mark the frontiers of research that’s going on worldwide. There are two aspects of that. One is, how do we generate high intensity? And the next question is, what science are we going to address with these lasers? We’re answering these questions through the way we’ve structured the sessions with their invited talks.
Another hot topic will be data and complexity reduction by applying modern machine-learning and AI approaches with the high-repetition-rate lasers and experiments. Another important advance that we’d like to capture are the maturing applications of high-field phenomena, attosecond physics, high harmonic generation and so forth.
Can you name a few of the pressing challenges in the field?
I think that the pressing challenges are many fold. The main ones to overcome are access to these capabilities, precision laser systems, targets, data acquisition and data interpretation.
For example, a few years ago the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine reported that the U.S. had lost ground to Europe and Asia in the field of high-intensity laser technology. When I mention access to capabilities, I mean that we as researchers are investing in these fields, and we need to feel that we have access to capability and competency with respect to pursuing our experiments. Right now, there isn’t a facility in the U.S. where scientists can explore these applications.
Another challenge is that, overall, the laser field has been advancing through new innovations over the past few years. It is time to make use of and progress rep-rated experimental methods. We need high-rep-rate targets and new ways of making these targets because the cost considerations are very different if you consume thousands of targets a day compared with just a few targets per day.
On the computational side, data acquisition and interpretation are major challenges as well.
What were your priorities when you were structuring the HILAS conference?
In planning this meeting, we wanted to have a broad view of the field—to know what’s driving the science in each pocket of the world. We also tried to ensure that the program is diverse and represents the diversity of the community.
I'm very excited about all of the invited talks. We had about 100 suggestions, which makes it very competitive, but it also shows that there's a huge focus on science right now—in Europe, in Asia and increasingly in the U.S. This generates advancement. Hopefully, this strong lineup of talks will spark discussions amongst the attendees, including the leaders in the field and the next-generation talent, because we like to think of this meeting as a workshop marking the frontiers of the field.
What do you hope to see come out of this meeting?
In times of rising walls between nations, cultures and peoples, we as scientists must continue to have an open exchange and build bridges. Science advances society. Meetings like this are a cornerstone of open-minded exchange. It brings three different topic areas together to inspire innovative ideas around laser-driven secondary sources, and it shows that there are synergies to be harvested from this field.
Read more about the congress in OPN’s Q&A with Majid Ebrahim-Zadeh.