NSF ZEUS Multi-Petawatt Laser Facility: Operations

The Gérard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Science at the University of Michigan will operate a new laser user facility to be called NSF Zettawatt-Equivalent Ultrashort pulse laser System (ZEUS) facility. The NSF ZEUS facility will operate the most powerful laser in the US and will provide unique and world-leading capabilities for scientific research.

The NSF ZEUS facility will have an open and transparent review process for facility access with at least 30 weeks per year dedicated to external user experiments. The facility will have local and national economic and societal impact through training of students and post-doctoral researchers at universities throughout the US, with specific outreach efforts focused on increasing demographic diversity of the ZEUS user community.

The facility will also foster innovation in the field of laser technology, potentially enabling formation of new high tech companies.

The new NSF ZEUS user facility will include a multi-beam 3 PetaWatt (PW) laser system that will have three radiation-shielded experimental target areas to accommodate differing experimental configurations for users. The ZEUS laser system will have three modes of operation, either for experiments using a single 3 PW beamline, dual beam 2.5 PW/500 TeraWatt (TW) or up to 300 TW at higher repetition rate.

A nanosecond-duration 75 J shock driver beamline for generating high-energy-density states of matter will also be available. The repetition rate of ZEUS at full power will be one shot per minute but will also have a higher repetition rate mode at 5 Hz for powers up to 300 TW. This additional operational mode will enable a significant amount of data to be taken, which is particularly important for x-ray (up to 50 keV) and neutron (up to 20 MeV) imaging applications.

These bursts of x-rays and neutrons produced by ZEUS will have ultra-short pulse duration and can also be used for probing dynamic events at picosecond or femtosecond temporal resolution.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.