Colin N. Danson, Malcolm White, John R. M. Barr, Thomas Bett, Peter Blyth, David Bowley, Ceri Brenner, Robert J. Collins, Neal Croxford, A. E. Bucker Dangor, Laurence Devereux, Peter E. Dyer, Anthony Dymoke-Bradshaw, Christopher B. Edwards, Paul Ewart, Allister I. Ferguson, John M. Girkin, Denis R. Hall, David C. Hanna, Wayne Harris, David I. Hillier, Christopher J. Hooker, Simon M. Hooker, Nicholas Hopps, Janet Hull, David Hunt, Dino A. Jaroszynski, Mark Kempenaars, Helmut Kessler, Sir Peter L. Knight, Steve Knight, Adrian Knowles, Ciaran L. S. Lewis, Ken S. Lipton, Abby Littlechild, John Littlechild, Peter Maggs, Graeme P. A. Malcolm, Stuart P. D. Mangles, William Martin, Paul McKenna, Richard O. Moore, Clive Morrison, Zulfikar Najmudin, David Neely, Geoff H. C. New, Michael J. Norman, Ted Paine, Anthony W. Parker, Rory R. Penman, Geoff J. Pert, Chris Pietraszewski, Andrew Randewich, Nadeem H. Rizvi, Nigel Seddon, Zheng-Ming Sheng, David Slater, Roland A. Smith, Christopher Spindloe, Roy Taylor, Gary Thomas, John W. G. Tisch, Justin S. Wark, Colin Webb, S. Mark Wiggins, Dave Willford, Trevor Winstone. A history of high-power laser research and development in the United Kingdom[J]. High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2021, 9(2): 02000e18
- High Power Laser Science and Engineering
- Vol. 9, Issue 2, 02000e18 (2021)
Fig. 1. Ed Ballik’s 1.15 μm HeNe laser at Oxford 1963–1964. (Picture courtesy of the University of Oxford.)
Fig. 2. The F2 laser constructed in the Clarendon Laboratory in 1992. (Picture courtesy of the University of Oxford.)
Fig. 3. Close-up of a modeless laser showing dye cell, small strip mirror and one 45° prism at one end with overlaid lines to show the four-pass path of the laser beam travelling wave. (Picture courtesy of the University of Oxford.)
Fig. 4. The experimental team in the Oxford-led first HED experiment on the Euro-XFEL in May 2019.
Fig. 5. An early ~100 mJ, 5 ps flashlamp-pumped Nd silicate glass laser built by Roy Taylor at Imperial to investigate high harmonic generation (HHG; 2nd, 4th, 28th in Ne or He). (Picture courtesy of Imperial College London.)
Fig. 6. Dan Bradley and Henry Hutchinson’s excimer laser in the basement of the Huxley building, Imperial College London. (Picture courtesy of Imperial College London.)
Fig. 7. The UK’s first table-top terawatt (T3) system, a 1 J, 1 ps T3 laser developed at Imperial College by the Laser Consortium, circa 1998. This was the first operational T3 CPA laser system in Europe, built by PhD student Mary Falden and then Postdoc Roland Smith. (Picture courtesy of Imperial College London.)
Fig. 8. Imperial College’s terawatt 150 fs, 150 mJ Ti:sapphire CPA system circa 2000 being adjusted by the then PhD student Mike Mason. (Picture courtesy of Imperial College London.)
Fig. 9. Dan Bradley’s group at QUB circa 1969. (Picture courtesy of QUB.)
Fig. 10. Ciaran Lewis and his first PhD student, Peter Cunningham, at QUB in the mid-1980s with the TA2 target chamber recycled from the CLF. (Picture courtesy of QUB.)
Fig. 11. The TARANIS target chamber at the CPP, QUB. (Picture courtesy of QUB.)
Fig. 12. Dave Hanna in the early days of the ORC at Southampton. (Picture courtesy of the University of Southampton.)
Fig. 13. Dave Hughes, Research Fellow, and PhD student A. A. Majdabadi from Southampton commissioning the Nd:LMA oscillator on the VULCAN laser for ultra-short pulse operation. (Picture courtesy of STFC.)
Fig. 14. Sir David Payne conducting research on optical fibres. (Picture courtesy of the University of Southampton.)
Fig. 15. Mercury bromide laser (University of Hull, Applied Physics Department, circa 1983).
Fig. 16. The Satellite Laser Ranging System at Herstmonceux with images of the Lageos Satellite and the SLR system in operation at night with the transmitted beam visible. (Picture courtesy of the University of Hull.)
Fig. 17. A very young Malcom Dunn with Arthur Maitland working on one of the argon lasers developed at St Andrews.
Fig. 18. A 1 kW sealed RF planar waveguide CO2 laser with Dr. Alan Colley and Dr. Suzy Zhang. (Picture courtesy of Heriot-Watt University.)
Fig. 19. Allister Ferguson at the Laserfest event at the Glasgow Science Centre where ‘50 Years of the Laser in Scotland’ was launched. Speakers at the event included Nobel laureates Steve Chu, Roy Glauber and Eric Cornell. Local speakers included Dave Hanna, Ed Hinds and Steve Barnett.
Fig. 20. Several of the UK-FEL team members (from left to right) Dino Jaroszynski, Maurice Kelliher, Maurice Kimmitt, and person unknown.
Fig. 21. The UK-FEL undulator at Kelvin Laboratory, East Kilbride circa 1983.
Fig. 22. Left: ALPHA-X team members in the control area of the TOPS laboratory on the first electron beam in March 2007, (left to right) Riju Issac, Gregory Vieux, Richard Shanks and Enrico Brunetti. Right: First electrons on the SCAPA ALPHA-X beamline in Bunker C in 2017, 10 years later, (left to right) Mohammed Shahzad, Gregory Welsh, Enrico Brunetti and Giorgio Battaglia.
Fig. 23. Left: The 4 TW TOPS facility in 2002. Right: Dr. Riju Issac who developed laser–cluster interaction-based X-ray sources.
Fig. 24. The SCAPA laser facility interaction areas: (a) Beamline A2 in Bunker A; (b) Beamline B2 in Bunker B; and (c) work in progress on the ALPHA-X/medical beamline in Bunker C.
Fig. 25. The SCAPA Thales 5 Hz, 350 TW laser.
Fig. 26. Colyn Grey Morgan working on a TEA laser at the University College Swansea circa 1976.
Fig. 27. Jiun-Yuan Lin, then at the University of Essex, adjusts an X-ray laser target in the VULCAN target chamber circa late-1990s. (Picture courtesy of STFC.)
Fig. 28. The front cover of the popular science magazine New Scientist featuring the work of the UK X-ray Laser Consortium. (Image copyright New Scientist. )
Fig. 29. The inauguration of the CLF with, from left to right, Professor Alan Gibson, Professor Dan Bradley, Sir Sam Edwards and Godfrey Stafford, RAL Director. (Picture courtesy of STFC.)
Fig. 30. Dave Wood shown with the Sprite e-beam pumped amplifier cell in 1982. (Picture courtesy of STFC.)
Fig. 31. The VULCAN laser hall showing the output disc amplifiers with Colin Danson, foreground, and Bob Bann carrying out final system alignment circa 1986. (Picture courtesy of STFC.)
Fig. 32. The VULCAN Petawatt target area during final commissioning with Andy Frackiewicz on the platform operating the crane and Trevor Winstone guiding from the ground in 2003. (Picture courtesy of STFC.)
Fig. 33. Mike Towrie lining-up PIRATE in 2000. (Picture courtesy of STFC.)
Fig. 34. Alec Thomas, Chris Murphy and Stuart Mangles (foreground), experimental lead, in Astra Target Area 2 during the monoenergetic electron beam experiment in 2004. (Picture courtesy of STFC.)
Fig. 35. Beryl Child, standing, and Sarah Hallewell in the CLF’s Target Preparation Micro-Assembly Laboratory in 1982. (Picture courtesy of STFC.)
Fig. 36. Artists impression of the High Power Laser Energy Research Facility – HiPER. (Picture courtesy of STFC.)
Fig. 37. Dave Hunt with the ‘breathalaser’. (Picture courtesy of AWE.)
Fig. 38. The MERLIN target chamber. (Photo courtesy of AWE.)
Fig. 39. Queen Elizabeth II is shown the HELEN target chamber by John Weale, Head of Radiation Physics Department, to mark the formal opening of the facility in 1979. (Picture courtesy of AWE.)
Fig. 40. The HELEN laser during commissioning. (Picture courtesy of AWE.)
Fig. 41. The HELEN target area with self-illumination from the green light produced when the laser beams are frequency doubled. (Picture courtesy of AWE.)
Fig. 42. The Orion Laser Hall showing the long pulse beamlines on the left and the two petawatt beamlines on the right. (Picture courtesy of AWE.)
Fig. 43. The Orion 4 m diameter target chamber. (Picture courtesy of AWE.)
Fig. 44. NIF target being assembled at AWE using video coordinate measuring machine supported assembly techniques. (Picture courtesy of AWE.)
Fig. 45. Mike Forrest operates a hand-built laser that is part of a Thomson scattering system used to measure plasma temperatures. This became a major diagnostic technique in the fusion field and is used to this day. (Picture courtesy of Wikipedia.org.)
Fig. 46. Mark Kempenaars, from the ITER organization (who provided most of the material for this section) examining a ruby rod from the LIDAR laser system while he was working at JET. (Picture courtesy of EUROfusion.)
Fig. 47. Dr. Alexandru Boboc, Responsible Officer for the JET Interferometer system, tuning the DCN laser. (Picture courtesy of EUROfusion.)
Fig. 48. Photograph that graced the Boardroom of Technical Optics for many years. Courtesy of Helmut Kessler, Manx Precision Optics, where the picture now resides.
Fig. 49. The staff of JK Lasers outside their premises at 23 Somers Road, Rugby in the late 1970s.
Fig. 50. Janet Hull, JEH Lasers, maintaining a JK Lasers Nd:YAG mode locked dye system in 2020 at the Space Geodesy Group, Herstmonceux, East Sussex. Parts of the laser date back to the late 1970s, it was heavily modified in the early 1980s and is still operational.
Fig. 51. John Girkin and Allister Ferguson with the Photon Control Micro-YAG (Southampton University Newspaper ).
Fig. 52. In 1978, Andrew Kearsley put the first commercial excimer laser in Europe through its paces at Oxford Lasers.
Fig. 53. Malcolm White welcoming the Duke of Kent and guests to the opening of the new Electrox factory.
Fig. 54. Graeme Malcolm in M Squared’s open-plan laboratory in 2007 at their first premises at Todd Campus which is part of the West of Scotland Science Park, Glasgow.
Fig. 55. Ken Lipton receiving the Queen’s Award for Export from the Lord Lieutenant (Rofin Sinar UK Ltd).
Fig. 56. A view along one of the tunnels at Optical Surfaces from an early brochure with Mr. Moress, foreground, and Mr. Harrington.
Fig. 57. A large aperture, servo stabilized, tunable Fabry–Pérot etalon viewed in sodium yellow light manufactured by ICOS.
Fig. 58. PowerPhotonic beam shaper for multi-kilowatt laser welding.
Fig. 59. Advert from circa 1984 for the Martock Design opto-mechanics systems and accessories and its current successor the Elliot Scientific ‘Gold’ flexure stage.
Fig. 60. Alec Huston and John Hadland with the first production of Imacon Streak Camera circa 1966–1967.
Fig. 61. One of the founders of Photek, Jon Howorth, attending the Descartes Prize ceremony In Prague in 2004. Jon sadly passed away in October 2020. (Image courtesy of Jon’s family.)
Fig. 62. Lamp assembler Ian Grange operating a lathe at Noblelight circa 1981.
Fig. 63. Oxford Lasers Ltd’s 3 J-Series micromachining systems.
Fig. 64. Nadeem Rizvi works on one of Laser Micromachining Ltd’s short-pulse laser tools for wafer patterning.
Fig. 65. EEV’s CX1625A hollow anode thyratron designed for excimer lasers.
Fig. 66. The CLF’s Ray Wyatt inside the VULCAN capacitor bank showing ignitrons in the left cabinet and HVR resistors in the main circuit. (Picture courtesy of STFC.)
Fig. 67. Jonathan Hares, foreground, and Anthony Dymoke-Bradshaw show off one of their first ultra-high-speed cameras for an article ‘High speed picture of success’ as appeared in the Telegraph , 30 November 1992. (Image copyright Telegraph. )
Fig. 68. Photonex ’97 held at the Kettering Leisure Village.
Fig. 69. Laser Lines exhibiting at the Electro-optics show in Brighton 1976. Ted Paine can be seen in the middle with the sideburns.
Fig. 70. A Ferranti MK11C gyro-stabilized gun sight. (Picture Courtesy of Leonardo.)
Fig. 71. An image of the gun sight from a Ferranti ISIS Century brochure. (Picture Courtesy of Leonardo.)
Fig. 72. A HeNe laser resonator designed to operate as a ring laser gyro. (Picture courtesy of Leonardo.)
Fig. 73. The Ferranti version of the Westinghouse Nd:YAG laser acquired via a radar for laser swap in 1966. The Porro is visible on the right-hand side while the mirror is at the far end. The Nd:YAG rod and pump chamber are visible in the centre of the structure. (Picture courtesy of Leonardo.)
Fig. 74. Reviewing the installation of the prototype LRMTS onto the Canberra test bed at Turnhouse Airport circa March 1971. (Picture courtesy of Leonardo.)
Fig. 75. The LRMTS showing the stabilized sensors. (Picture courtesy of Leonardo.)
Fig. 76. The Ferranti Type 306 Laser Target Marker (LTM). (Picture courtesy of Leonardo.)
Fig. 77. Leonardo’s modern Type 163 laser designator during a live fire test. (Picture courtesy of Leonardo.)
Fig. 78. The TIALD internal structure. (Picture courtesy of Leonardo.)
Fig. 79. TIALD mounted on a Tornado. (Picture courtesy of Leonardo.)
Fig. 80. A model of the Dragonfire Beam Director unveiled at DSEI 2017. (Picture courtesy of Leonardo.)
Fig. 81. Eurolaser, with Trevor Bearpark (left) and Simon Scott in the foreground.
Fig. 82. The origins of MBDA. (Picture courtesy of MBDA.)
Fig. 83. Early version of Malvern Type 4300 Photon Correlation Spectrometer and slightly later commercial product ‘Zetasizer Nano with MPT2 Autotitrator’.
Fig. 84. Schematic cavity configuration for a diode-pumped Tm,Ho:YLF laser and output power versus incident power comparisons for Tm,Ho:YAP, Tm:YAP and Tm,Ho:YLF.
Fig. 85. RSRE FMCW heterodyne detection rangefinder and Doppler velocimeter showing plan-view of the optical circuit consisting of the heterodyne optical interferometer system in conjunction with the CO2 waveguide laser master oscillator, Stark cell, acousto-optic modulator, cooled CMT detector (and associated preamplifier electronics) and bi-static transmit–receive optics. The red and blue lines show the transmit, receive and local oscillator paths, respectively.
Fig. 86. Early Lamberton and Pearson trigger wire pre-ionized TEA laser providing 2.0 J pulse outputs at 1.0 Hz repetition rates from an active laser volume of 100 cm3.
Fig. 87. Schematic of VX543, a 34.0 L active volume, 1.0 kJ single-shot, electron-beam sustained, transversely excited, atmospheric pressure, CO2 laser.
Fig. 88. Schematic ‘REP3’, a large volume, re-circulating gas, e-beam-gun sustained, TEA laser, providing 600 J pulses at 66 Hz in half-second bursts with an average power of 36 kW in the form of a transverse multimode output.
Fig. 89. A photograph of the complete Stark cell stabilized CO2 waveguide laser system with the associated control electronics developed by Gordon C. Joyce from RSRE, Malvern. In conjunction with the Stark cell, the control electronics adjust the cavity length of the laser, via an integrated PZT element, to lock the output to the centre of the P20 10.6 μm transition.
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