CLF Gemini Laser Facility

Gemini Laser Facility - Highlights

Gemini uses plasma ‘optical fibres’ to improve laser-driven acceleration
The Oxford Laser Plasma Accelerators Group have demonstrated a solution to two key challenges in laser-driven plasma accelerators, allowing them to potentially reach higher energies over smaller distances.
Gemini creates 'ghostly mirrors' for high-power lasers
Laser-driven ‘mirrors’ capable of reflecting or manipulating light have been produced using the CLF’s Gemini during research led by the University of Strathclyde, published in Nature Communications Physics.
Unpicking the energy transfer processes in miniature laser-plasma accelerators
Using the CLF’s laser Gemini, scientists demonstrated a new diagnostic technique that can be used to improve the efficiency of the next generation of ultra-compact particle accelerators.
Gemini Tests the Theory: Turning Light into Matter
Scientists at Imperial Collage London and the CLF’s Gemini Laser Facility have published a paper on testing an 84-year-old theory that was once thought impossible to prove.
The First Fully Automated Plasma Accelerator
An international group of researchers have used the CLF’s Astra-Gemini Laser to implement AI in order to optimize a new type of particle accelerator.
Team use Astra Laser to create “fibre-optic cables” made of sun-surface temperature plasma
Compact particle accelerators such as laser plasma accelerators offer huge potential in scientific research, medicine and industry.
Using ultrashort pulsed, hard, bright X-rays to ‘freeze’ laser driven shock waves in silicon
Using ultrafast imaging; Jonathan Wood and a group of scientists at Gemini captured images of laser driven shock waves in a silicon target, enabling bright X-ray probing of high energy density physics without the use of larger, light synchrotron sources.
Light so intense that it can even slow matter down
Scientists from Queen’s University Belfast have used the CLF’s Astra-Gemini laser to provide the first direct experimental evidence that ultrafast light can significantly slow down a high-energy electron beam.
Explosive Potential - Gemini laser creates artificial gamma ray burst in the laboratory for the first time
A team, led by Gianluca Sarri from Queen's University Belfast, have used the Gemini laser at the CLF to recreate a mini gamma ray burst (GRB) - one of the most powerful explosions in the universe.
UK Laser Experiment Mimics Black Hole Environment
UK physicists have for the first time used an extremely powerful laser beam to slow down electrons travelling at near-light speeds – a quantum mechanical phenomenon thought to occur only around objects like black holes.
Gemini Laser Facility Used to Deepen Knowledge of Polarization Dependence of Bulk Ion Acceleration
A recent experiment led by the Queens University Belfast has deepened our knowledge of how to gain the best results out of this process. The team used the CLF's Gemini laser to access a new regime – Light Sail - in laser-driven ion acceleration.
ASTRA short, low-energy laser pulses drive low amplitude plasma wakefields
Gemini laser contributes to new way to manipulate beams of protons
A targeted way to manipulate beams of protons accelerated using ultrashort and ultra-intense laser pulses has been demonstrated by a team of researchers led by the University of Strathclyde and performed using the Gemini laser
New twists in the diffraction of intense laser light
A paper published in Nature Physics this week features results from a Gemini laser experiment in which the laser pulse is observed to drive a spiralling beam of electrons