Colorado State University is planning to construct one of the most powerful lasers on Earth. It’s being done through a $150 million public-private partnership with the German company Marvel Fusion.
Grant Calhoun, who works on industry research at CSU, said the new laser would have big advantages in the quest to generate fusion power—a longstanding dream technologythat scientists believe could provide nearly unlimited clean energy.
Some labs in California have recently broke even on energy production in a test of the potential of laser-based fusion energy. Calhoun said CSU's new laboratory will have lasers capable of similar-strength beams, but at a fraction of the size.
"The beauty of it is that these smaller lasers have a higher peak power—or the same peak power—as these very large facilities," Calhoun said. "So, the footprint won't be very big, but the power will be unmatched."
Calhoun believes public-private partnerships like the one to construct this laser have a lot of strengths.
"(It's) a real example of the way that academia and industry can work together to solve some of the world's biggest challenges around clean energy," Calhoun said. "I think if we're successful, it'll really be a blueprint for that moving forward."
Fusion energy is still a long way off, though. So far, using lasers to fuse matter has allowed scientists to barely break even in terms of energy production, getting about as much energy out of the lasers as they put into creating them.
But according to Calhoun, scientists seem to be getting closer every year. And CSU's laboratory has one key advantage over others: researchers there will likely be able to perform many more laser tests in a given timeframe than some of the other larger laser laboratories thanks to innovations in CSU's laser laboratory design.
This will be the second laser laboratory to be constructed at CSU’s Foothills Campus and it’s expected to open in 2026. In the meantime, there is still some work to be done in designing the facility and the lasers within.
CSU is one of eight universities in the U.S. and Canada that are part of a North American high-intensity laser research network.
