BUFFALO, N.Y. — NSF OPAL, a proposed facility that will be the world’s most powerful laser system and include the University at Buffalo as a partner, has taken another major step toward construction.

The University of Rochester, where the facility will be built, has been awarded the first round of funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to advance the project into its final design phase, with funding potentially totaling up to $13.7 million. 

The final design award builds on the nearly $18 million in NSF funding awarded in 2023 for the project’s initial design and technology development. With this latest award, the project team will complete the design of a next-generation laser facility and advance critical technologies. 

The award will also support activities at UB and other NSF OPAL partner institutions, including the University of California, Irvine, the University of Notre Dame and Plymouth Grating Laboratory.

Eva Zurek, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the UB Department of Chemistry, is a co-principal investigator on the project. She is also a senior investigator with the Center for Matter at Atomic Pressures (CMAP), an NSF-Physics Frontiers Center also hosted at the University of Rochester.

NSF OPAL will be a two-beam, high-peak-power facility constructed at URochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE). Once completed, it is expected to be the world’s most powerful laser system and will serve as a shared resource for the global scientific community.

The facility is designed to give researchers unprecedented capabilities to investigate open questions in quantum electrodynamics, recreate conditions in the early universe, and produce the most powerful electron accelerator on Earth.

The project will:

• Reestablish U.S. leadership in ultrahigh-intensity laser-based science.
• Develop optics that will have direct impacts on next-generation lasers for national security, fusion energy, advanced semiconductor and industrial manufacturing, and medical applications.
• Usher in new measurement tools that will provide impacts across particle physics, nuclear physics, and fusion and plasma physics.

The facility will also integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning into experiment planning, operations, and data analysis from the outset, making it among the first major scientific user facilities to build AI and ML into its core design.

Workforce development is central to the project. The final design phase includes hands-on training for the next generation of laser facility designers, builders, operators, and scientific users.