CentrCentralal Laser Facility HIGHLIGHTS CLF Highlights09 aw.qxd 18/11/09 11:01 Page iii STFC CENTRAL LASER FACILITY HIGHLIGHTS Central Laser Facility HIGHLIGHTS CLF Highlights09 aw.qxd 18/11/09 10:26 Page iv CLF Highlights09 aw.qxd 18/11/09 11:02 Page 1 STFC CENTRAL LASER FACILITY HIGHLIGHTS Contents FOREWORD 2 THE CENTRAL LASER FACILITY 3 LASERS AND THEIR APPLICATIONS 4 HOW DOES A LASER WORK? 6 SCIENCE 8 ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT 10 Fusion energy 10 Capturing cloud chemistry on a droplet 12 Electrons take a quick hop across proteins 14 LIFE SCIENCE 16 DNA damage limitation 16 A platinum probe lights up live cells for longer 18 Capturing photosynthesis in action 20 Molecular bonds revealed in an instant 22 Serotonin mapping in living cells 24 HEALTH 26 Towards personalised medicine 26 Nanoprobes sense tiny forces 28 What lies beneath? 30 Transmutation – the alchemists’ dream 32 New technologies for cancer therapy 34 A new tool in the fight against cancer 36 UNIVERSE 38 Secrets of sunshine 38 X-rays on a table top 40 Journey to the centre of Jupiter 42 Inside materials under extreme pressure 44 Stellar fireworks in the laboratory 46 Making matter out of light 48 NEW TOOLS FOR SCIENCE 50 Lasers hit the high notes 50 How low can you go? 52 The most intense light on Earth 54 HiPER 56 New Light Source 58 ALICE 60 FACILITIES 62 Vulcan 64 Astra Gemini 66 Artemis 68 Lasers for Science Facility 70 Simulating the complexities of plasmas 72 Making targets for laser experiments 74 WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP 76 International partnerships 78 Knowledge transfer and awards 80 Outreach 82 Training 84 GLOSSARY 86 1 CLF Highlights09 aw.qxd 18/11/09 10:27 Page 2 Foreword Research at the Central Laser Facility (CLF) is a partnership between its staff and members of the UK and international scientific communities. The CLF offers world leading laser equipment, often developed in-house, that pushes the frontiers of extremely high power and intensity, ultra-short pulse length, and unsurpassed measurement sensitivity. The research ranges from fundamental studies of physics, chemistry and biology, to applications that address the grand challenges facing our society: the production of abundant, secure, carbon-free energy, understanding and controlling disease, understanding our environment, and protecting our national security. The CLF has delivered a range of major new facilities over the recent past to ensure its research communities can continue to operate at the forefront of their field. We have also laid out an internationally coordinated future development path to retain this leadership position and demonstrate the significant impact of this area of science. I hope that the following pages provide a useful introduction to the exciting research currently underway, and illustrate the huge talent and creativity of our staff and academic and industrial partners. Professor Mike Dunne Director, Central Laser Facility 2 CLF Highlights09 aw.qxd 18/11/09 10:27 Page 3 STFC CENTRAL LASER FACILITY HIGHLIGHTS The Central Laser Facility The Central Laser Facility (CLF) is one of the world’s leading laser science institutes, giving researchers from across the UK and around the world access to an unparalleled suite of state-of-the-art laser light sources The CLF’s facilities are used for activities as The Lasers for Science Facility is home to the CLF’s APPLICATIONS diverse as subatomic particle acceleration, Molecular Structural Dynamics and Functional OF CLF LASERS probing chemical reactions on the shortest Biosystems Imaging groups. The 10 kHz ULTRA laser is timescales, and studying bioscience processes one of the world’s best instruments for infrared- • Fusion energy critical to life itself. From advanced, compact, visible-ultraviolet spectroscopy and the scientists tuneable lasers, which can reveal intricate using it have an international reputation in the • Molecular biology detail on a microscopic scale, to high-power dynamics field. The OCTOPUS cluster of lasers enables • Compact particle installations that recreate the conditions inside real time imaging in complex physical and biological accelerators stars and point the way to new carbon-free systems, integrating a very wide range of techniques. energy sources, the CLF’s facilities span the A multi-skilled team works on problems ranging from • Microscopy fundamental biochemical pathway analysis and whole range of ultra short pulse capability. • Cancer therapy The CLF’s lasers are available to academic and optical manipulation of micro- and nano scale objects industrial groups – anyone who can devise the through to the development of predictive methods for • Astrophysics healthcare applications. most exciting experiment! • Diagnosis of disease The largest systems are Vulcan and Astra Gemini. Harwell Science and Innovation Campus Vulcan is a very high energy laser with a footprint • Drug The CLF is based at the STFC Rutherford Appleton bigger than six tennis courts. A single Vulcan shot can development involve irradiating a sophisticated target with several Laboratory, on the Harwell Science and Innovation beams and monitoring the resulting extreme plasmas Campus in the heart of Oxfordshire. The site hosts • Atmospheric using multiple diagnostic instruments. At the peak of many other facilities and institutes, including: physics and a pulse Vulcan delivers a power of one petawatt (a • ISIS – the world’s leading pulsed neutron and muon environment source; thousand million million watts). • Planetary studies Astra Gemini is designed to match Vulcan’s power in • The ESA International Space Innovation Centre, • New materials shorter, lower energy pulses. It drives similar areas of alongside Europe’s biggest space science and plasma research but its design allows it to fire shots technology department; • Chemical much more quickly than Vulcan can – up to three per • The Diamond Light Source – the UK’s national manufacturing minute compared with Vulcan’s few per hour. synchrotron radiation facility and the country’s largest scientific investment in 40 years; The CLF’s Artemis laser operates at a higher pulse rate still – 1 kHz – with the shortest pulses (below ten • Laboratories of the Medical Research Council, femtoseconds). Another difference from the larger the UK Atomic Energy Authority and the Health systems is that Artemis can be tuned across a wide Protection Agency. spectral range. These features allow it to carry out the In addition, a growing number of high tech businesses most advanced experiments in, for example, materials are based on the campus, several of which have been science and gas-phase chemistry. spun out from the laboratories themselves. 3 CLF Highlights09 aw.qxd 18/11/09 10:27 Page 4 Laser light is not like normal light. It is its state and they can also reveal detailed information produced through an amplification process about its atomic, molecular and structural properties. which works at the atomic level (see p 6) and They are among the most versatile and useful which gives it very particular properties. It can laboratory instruments available. travel a long distance without expanding (for The largest lasers can be used, for example, to example, from a laser pointer or in a laser light recreate the extreme conditions found in stars. show). It can also be compressed in time to High-power laser pulses are focused down to a tiny produce very short bursts of light (currently spot where the temperature reaches millions of less than 10-16 seconds) or to create very high degrees and the pressure rises to billions of powers (over 1015 watts). And it can be atmospheres. Under these conditions, atoms and focused to very small spots to act as a high molecules are blasted into a gaseous soup of charged particles called a plasma. By analysing the content of resolution microscope, or to create extreme such plasmas and observing their behaviour, scientists temperatures. can learn about the fundamental properties of matter. Having evolved in a few decades from an exotic They can also develop practical schemes such as the scientific concept, lasers are now found everywhere, harnessing of nuclear fusion as a source of abundant, from supermarket checkouts and CD players to safe energy. hospitals and the factory floor. They also power the Ultra-short pulsed lasers can follow transient changes whole global communications network. Depending on in atoms and molecules, even tracking the subtle and the application, they can be tiny semiconductor complex reactions of biomolecular species in living devices, table-top instruments or huge laboratory cells. Understanding these processes installations. Many hundreds of different kinds of laser is important, economically, for exist, designed to emit radiation over a wide range of example in sensing and chemical wavelengths from microwaves to X-rays. engineering, environmentally, since Lasers remain a major scientific research tool because climate is affected so strongly by they interact with all kinds of matter in very specific atmospheric chemistry and physics, ways. They can, when required, dramatically change and medically, since the prevention Lasers and their applications Lasers are powerful tools for ground-breaking research in 4 CLF Highlights09 aw.qxd 18/11/09 10:27 Page 5 STFC CENTRAL LASER FACILITY HIGHLIGHTS and treatment of disease often involves managing the lasers in the CLF are very much more productive processes at the cellular level. Their extreme than they would be if each was limited to just one selectivity and their ability to resolve detail down to task. The best equipment in the world is, inevitably, the microscopic scale are also making lasers an expensive and this approach ensures that the country increasingly important tool in biomedical imaging. gets the maximum value from its investment. The CLF provides laser systems to enable all of these studies. The systems all have the same general form, consisting of three principal components: • One or more oscillators, where the initial pulses of light are produced • Amplifiers, where energy is pumped into the pulses • An experimental area, where the laser pulses emerge and are delivered to the sample being studied.