Just a short distance outside of Fort Collins on the Colorado State University Foothills Campus sits one of the most powerful lasers in the world.

Directed by professors and run by graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, the Advanced Beam Laboratory studies interactions between high-intensity laser beams and matter. CSU doesn’t limit their facility to only local researchers, however.

The Advanced Beam Laboratory is a part of LaserNetUS, an organization funded by the United States Department of Energy. They are dedicated to enabling collaboration between high-intensity laser labs across the country.

Thanks to LaserNetUS, for a few weeks spanning late October and early November 2024, the lab looked into ion acceleration, specifically the properties and creation of proton beams. Griffin Glenn, a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University working out of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, was the principal investigator for the project.

“We’re interested in studying the physics that accelerates that beam of protons,” Glenn said. “There’s one (acceleration mechanism) that’s very well understood. It happens all the time, and we want to push past that one into a different regime where we might get protons that go faster, that have more energy.”

When a thin, solid target is hit with a short-pulse, high-intensity laser, the interaction creates a beam of particles. The target is destroyed by the laser, and the particles of that target, like protons, come from it in the beam that follows. The destruction of the target poses a problem for high-repetition-rate lasers like CSU’s, as the laser would have to be stopped in order for the target to be replaced before it could fire again.

“The laser can shoot every two seconds, but every time it destroys the target,” Glenn said. “Our solution is that we have a liquid sheet of water that we can shoot; it’s destroyed, but then the water keeps flowing, so we can shoot it again in the same spot two seconds later. Every time you shoot, you get a beam of protons, so we’re going to generate these high-rep-rate proton beams.”

Each of the laser facilities connected by LaserNetUS has its own specialized traits that make it useful for different types of experiments. The Advanced Beam Lab’s laser is perfect for producing the type of proton beams Glenn is looking for.

“This laser really is a unique set of capabilities in the country, and they do a lot of good work,” Glenn said. “It’s relatively high power while also being high-rep-rate, and that’s really the key thing. There are other people who have lasers that are this size, but they can only shoot once a minute or once an hour, but this laser can shoot — if you want it to — every couple seconds.”

This idea didn’t completely start with Glenn, and he was not the first researcher from SLAC to visit to the lab. Franziska Treffert, now a postdoctoral researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, began looking into neutron generation as a part of her Ph.D..

“Now (Glenn) is taking this platform further than what I was able to do during my Ph.D.,” Treffert said. “I’ve come in to help a little bit because we used to come here for experiments.”

Treffert’s work was focused on neutron generation with heavy water — water made of deuterium and oxygen rather than hydrogen and oxygen — as a target. Glenn’s project builds on the knowledge base and durable setup Treffert established during her time as a graduate student working at SLAC.

“We needed to adapt the whole setup for the jet to form in a way that we knew it would survive conditions here in the lab,” Treffert said. “I did the first iteration of building the whole system for the experiment here at CSU that I did in 2021, and then from there, you can take it in different avenues because it’s a pretty flexible platform.”

By the beginning of November, the team was getting ready to take their first shot.

“Right now, we’re on this crucial threshold,” Treffert said. “We’re basically done with our setup, (and) now we’re trying to transition into that data collection period, and that involves a lot of really important tasks. We’re in a critical time period where we want to put as much energy in and make sure that we get to a point where we can go collect data.”

Glenn and his team had four weeks at CSU to conduct their experiments before their allotted time was up. They had a lot of experience traveling between different labs and knew how prioritize efficiency.

“We have to develop all of our stuff in advance, and then we pack it all into shipping containers, send it to the facility, build it, do the experiment, tear it down and ship it home,” Glenn said. “It’s a pretty intense four weeks because if we get to the end of that time and we don’t have any data — tough.”

Luckily, the Advanced Beam Lab is full of staff scientists who assist in streamlining experiments just like Glenn’s. Their knowledge of the equipment helps keep projects on track.

“At some other places where I worked — including some national-type facilities — they just don’t have as many people whose job is to support the people working on doing experiments,” Glenn said. “We have a lot of CSU staff here helping us out, and that really makes a big difference.”

One of CSU’s researchers, Ghassan Zeraouli, has spent time providing support to the team. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Salamanca in Spain, he became a staff scientist at the lab, helping researchers who are conducting their experiments.

“The success of the experiment is our priority,” Zeraouli said. “We stay with them (and) help them operate until we turn off the laser.”

Because researchers bring their own equipment most of the time, staff scientists are responsible for determining if their materials are safe to operate within the facility. They also use their broad knowledge to give opinions to researchers on what to do in the event that they get stuck at a particular stage in an experiment.

“We have different backgrounds, but when we come together, we are able to run these experiments,” Zeraouli said. “You need knowledge from different domains.”

Through LaserNetUS, CSU can assist with and take part in hands-on scientific research done not just by other universities but national labs. SLAC and Lawrence Livermore are only two of many collaborators in a vast pool of scientific knowledge and inquiry.

“The national labs are really a special part of science in the U.S. because they do big projects that you can’t (normally) do, not just in physics but in biology and chemistry,” Glenn said. “There are a lot of people working on really big problems, and it’s a way into science careers that isn’t just being a professor and doesn’t necessarily require a Ph.D..”

Despite being a university facility, the Advanced Beam Lab is an important place for collaboration throughout the nation.

“We have one of the most powerful lasers in the world,” Zeraouli said. “It’s very weird to hear it, but this is a very important facility in the U.S. and also in the world.”

Reach Cait Mckinzie at science@collegian.com or on Twitter @CSUCollegian.