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I am a laser scientist working at STFC Central Laser Facility, a few miles outside Oxford. I work on the development of a new kind of laser, more specifically “high energy pulsed lasers”.

A laser is a device that amplifies light in a very well controlled way, creating powerful light beams with many amazing properties. For example, unlike light emitted by light bulbs, laser beams can travel very long distances with minimal spreading out.

Lasers that give out short bursts of light are called “pulsed lasers”. When you work with pulsed lasers, it is really important to know how much energy is contained in each light pulse and how often a laser can shine a pulse. Some lasers can produce high energy pulses, but only a few times per hour. Other lasers can emit many pulses per second, but the energy contained in each pulse is quite low. However, a lot of new exciting applications need lasers shining many high energy pulses each second. That’s where me and my colleagues come into play: we are developing a laser shining high energy pulses ten times a second! We have given a name to this laser: it is called DiPOLE.

I guess you are now thinking:

Wait a second… this sounds really interesting, but what can be DiPOLE used for?

Well, actually for a lot of thrilling and useful stuff! 🙂 Let me tell you a few examples:

Bringing the power of the Sun to the Earth – All life on Earth is made possible by energy produced in the Sun through a process called “fusion”. It is called “fusion” because hydrogen atoms are fused together at extremely high temperatures and pressures, which are found at the centre of the Sun. Lasers like DiPOLE can be the beginning of the development of a fusion power plant for clean energy production!

X-ray movies – Lasers like DiPOLE can be used to produce X-rays and different kinds of particles which can be used for engineering or medical purposes. For example, X-rays generated with DiPOLE can take several pictures of things which are very big and move very fast, like jet engines; if all pictures are put together one after the other it is possible to create an X-ray movie! Moreover, particles generated using DiPOLE can be used for medical scans to detect diseases like cancer.

Sun, rain or fog? – Lasers like DiPOLE can be used to rapidly and precisely measure, for example, temperature and humidity over wide areas of the sky. Meteorologists can use the results to predict weather with greater accuracy compared to what’s possible now.

One of the best things about my job is that every day is different from the others.

Some days I will be working at the PC carrying out simulations to design the laser or analysing experimental data. Some other days, I am in the lab building the laser and performing experiments. During the rest of the time, I usually plan new experiments, write reports or read scientific papers to keep myself up-to-date on the latest advancements in my field.