Creating Stars Using High Power Lasers Emma Hume, Department of Physics
Event details
Physics Winter Webinar series
Lasers are all around us in our daily life: from laser-pointer pens, to those used to perform laser eye surgery, or even in barcode scanners at the supermarket. There are also lasers that are more intense than the Sun. These so-called ‘high power lasers’ are used in physics research to heat material to millions of degrees and create extreme conditions in the laboratory. The material created is similar to that found in stars. Doing this allows us to learn more about astrophysics, and it also has an exciting potential application in fusion energy.
In this webinar we will explore what a high power laser is, how they are made, and how they are used in inertial confinement fusion and laboratory astrophysics research.
About the speaker
Emma Hume is a PhD researcher based at the York Plasma Institute at the University of York. In her research she studies the material created when firing an ultra-intense laser at nanostructured targets. She is also part of the Glass of Seawater podcast about fusion energy research.
Image credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory