WIREDGOV

A UK company has delivered a £300,000 contract to a high intensity laser facility in Romania - a hugely advanced set up which is expected to lead to major scientific breakthroughs with applications in oncology, X-ray and gamma-ray imaging. The contract was accepted thanks to support from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and has also led to further international business for the company.

NTE Vacuum Technology Limited built the brand new laser chamber for the CETAL Petawatt facility; it is modelled on an existing one in the Central Laser Facility at STFC’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) which was also built by NTE. A delegation from Romania saw the Gemini laser target interaction chamber at RAL and wanted a replica for the CETAL Petawatt laser facility.

Graham England, Managing Director of NTE Vacuum Technology Limited said: “NTE were delighted to hear that STFC were prepared to both recommend NTE and allow the use of the manufacturing drawings. The support from STFC gave NTE the confidence to accept the contract. It has also helped NTE win other international business with another company involved with the chamber”.

Professor John Collier, Director of the Central Laser Facility, said: “We are really pleased that NTE Vacuum Technology was awarded the contract to replicate our Central Laser Facility laser chamber in Romania. We are pleased both that UK expertise is being used internationally and that it resulted in more business for a UK company. It is a great demonstration of CLF and STFC collaborations supporting UK science, technology and engineering exports”.

CETAL is due to be installed at the National Institute for Laser, Plasma and Radiation Physics (INFLPR) in Bucharest-Magurele later this year and will have a programme of work very similar to the Gemini laser in the STFC Central Laser Facility. Gemini was used during some of the first demonstrations of ultra-intense laser pulses driving high quality electron acceleration. These have opened up the possibility for developing compact particle accelerators for use in medical and imaging applications.

Doctor Ion Morjan, Director of the INFLPR, Bucharest-Magurele, Romania, said:“After visiting the STFC Central Laser Facility we thought that the Gemini interaction chamber would be well suited for the interaction chamber for the CETAL-Petawatt laser we are installing at INFLPR. Professor Collier was kind to share the drawings of the Gemini chamber and NTE Vacuum Technology has won the tender. The all-aluminium vacuum chamber has been delivered to CETAL-Petawatt and we are very happy with the technical quality and chamber functionality. We are grateful for the help we have received from the CLF with the delivery of the CETAL-Petawatt project. We are looking forward to continuing the collaboration with the CLF. “

CETAL, together with the Extreme Light Infrastructure-Nuclear Physics Pillar that Romania will host at the Horia Hulubei National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering, will perform cutting edge research, bringing together several fields of physics such as high-power lasers and optics, relativistic plasma physics, particle physics, nuclear physics, ultrahigh pressure and nonlinear physics.

Notes to editors

Contacts

Lucy Stone
STFC Press Officer
+44 (0)1235 445627 / 07920 870125
Out of hours number: +44 (0)7092 982664.