High Power Laser Development

PhD project for October 2026
Supervised by Prof Roland A Smith (Light Community)  r.a.smith@ic.ac.uk

Type – A blend of ~ 70% Experimental and 30% Numerical.

Delivering a high-power laser beam through a kilometre of atmosphere is a tough problem, and one of particular importance to pressing challenges such as defence against aggressive drone swarms.  Turbulence and the generation of domains spanning a broad range of length and timescales scales is a ubiquitous phenomena in liquids, gases and plasmas.  In the atmosphere this turbulence is driven by thermal convection cells interacting with wind, and generates complex time and space varying refractive index changes.  This results in the twinkling of stars, and also the degradation of laser beam quality.

One solution to counteract atmospheric turbulence is to measure its effects in real time and try to actively correct for this.  A range of technologies are being developed to do this, including deformable mirrors and phase control of beamlets in a tiled array.  Their aim is to add an equal and opposite phase error to a beam as it is generated in order to cancel out the effect of refractive index variation along a beams path.  But how could we rapidly test and refine a complex correction system like this without having to take it out of the lab and run expensive full-scale tests at a firing range.

The aim of this PhD project is to develop new compact and controllable “physical simulators” for several km of turbulent atmosphere and test them with high-power laser beams.  Liquids are ~1000x denser than air, and so it should in principle be possible to use a few meters of water to mimic much longer distances in air – provided we can introduce the same kind of turbulent structures.  Here, a chance observation in our labs at Imperial kickstarted a new research theme.  We have been able to create subtle two-fluid turbulent mixing effects that appear to cause the “right” kind of beam degradation.  The aim now is to extend and refine this idea, working in conjunction with a team from UK company Qinetiq.

Funding for this project is currently being sought from the Energy Transfer Technologies PhD training Hub.  This 5-year scheme is funding a total of 60 PhDs spread across multiple universities and disciplines, and our students benefit from a range of cohort development, national lab and industry partner engagement and cross-training.  PhD projects also attract additional travel and lab consumable budgets plus a £4k top-up to the standard UKRI bursary.

Funding

Funded via the Energy Transfer Technologies PhD training Hub.  UK Nationality required.

UKRI bursary + additional £4k top-up.

PhD project for October 2026
Supervised by Prof Roland A Smith (Light Community)  r.a.smith@ic.ac.uk

Type –Experimental

This project will develop and exploit a new experimental platform based on high-speed (multi-kms^-1) laser launched “flyers”, small, fast-moving disks of metal.  We will use these to study impact and shock physics in gases, solids and counter-propagating flyers.  These impacts drive matter to extremes of temperature and pressure of the kind found in planetary cores or the early stages of inertial fusion experiments.  The use of a laser driver allows precise synchronisation of the flyer arrival with a range of state-of-the-art probes including sub-picosecond light pulses and laser driven MeV proton and hard x-ray radiation sources.

We have developed a technique to launch ~mm scale flyers using multi-GW laser pulses guided by a large-core optical fibre.  Recent proof of principle experiments at Imperial also show that we can use a laser accelerated 10 MeV proton beam to probe flyers during the launch phase (exploring material strength, failure and laser coupling mechanisms), in free flight and then during impact.  In this PhD we will add ultra-fast optical and x-ray probes driven by a multi-terawatt laser to the mix, allowing us to capture processes within the flyer, and directly image magnetic and electric field structures.

This project requires hands-on use of pulsed GW to multi-TW class lasers, building up from the largest university-based systems to national facilities and is an outstanding training opportunity for a PhD student.  Future goals include two-flyer head on impact studies and the use of a flyer launcher at a national facility laser for betatron x-ray radiation probing experiments to study high-energy density states of matter. 

Funding for this project is currently being sought from the Energy Transfer Technologies PhD training Hub.  This 5-year scheme is funding a total of 60 PhDs spread across multiple universities and disciplines, and our students benefit from a range of cohort development, national lab and industry partner engagement and cross-training.  PhD projects also attract additional travel and lab consumable budgets plus a £4k top-up to the standard UKRI bursary.

Funding   

Funding via the Energy Transfer Technologies PhD training Hub.  UK Nationality required,
UKRI bursary + additional £4k top-up