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Thales is manufacturing two new 10 petawatt (1,000,000,000,000,000) high intensity lasers, that offers an unprecedented level of power in ultrashort pulses and will be delivering them to the Horia Hulubei National Institute of Physics & Nuclear Engineering (IFIN-HH) in Magurele, Romania. This €60 million contract awarded to Thales to develop the laser systems is the largest contract by a national research institute under a European-funded programme.

Optical Surfaces has supplied the first of 10 high performance beam expanders for the Extreme Light Infrastructure for Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) project to develop the world’s most powerful laser system. Thales has selected Optical Surfaces to manufacture and supply 4 x 580 mm aperture and 6 x 200 mm aperture laser beam expanders for the ELI-NP project, because of its international reputation for supplying outstanding high power laser optics.

Due to be operational by 2018 the new lasers will pave the way for the development of a new generation of powerful particle accelerators, which will be smaller and less costly, for fundamental research in material physics and medical applications including proton beam therapy for treating cancer.