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Seeing a need for laser science facilities, the UK academic community comes together to propose a single, central laser infrastructure that they can share. They argue that this would enable a more advanced and capable infrastructure for the UK compared to spending an equivalent sum on lesser capabilities at numerous universities, thereby giving us collectively an international edge. This is approved in 1975.

A budding laser facility in the heart of Oxfordshire fires its flagship laser’s first full-power shot on 28th April. The Central Laser Facility is officially inaugurated on Monday 20th June 1977.

Electron-beam Laser Facility (ELF) is commissioned, which can be used to generate an ultraviolet laser. It is the first pulsed-power excimer laser in the world.

Vulcan is upgraded to deliver up to six beams onto targets for exploring heating and compression of matter for fusion applications. This provides a world-leading facility that underpins the global research effort for laser-driven fusion as a future energy source.

To optimise the design of the successor to ELF, known as Sprite, a computer model is developed and runs on the IBM 360 computer, the Rutherford Laboratory's first supercomputer.

In May 1982, Sprite, krypton fluoride laser, begins operations. It is the highest-powered laser of its kind and is used to develop the next generation of gas-laser technology and bright X-ray sources.

Circa 1983, the CLF’s Laser Support Facility (LSF) is set up, allowing users to conduct a range of chemistry and biology experiments. This would later become the Lasers for Science Facility, under the same acronym.

CLF spin-out company Exitech launches, which quickly grows to supply high quality systems to global brands like Sony. Sprite is used to calibrate the dust sensor for the Giotto space probe mission to Halley’s comet.

The Laser Loan Pool begins lending lasers to UK universities to use at their home institutions, underpinned by scientific and technical support, to enable new research.

The CLF acquires new laser systems to reinforce its leadership in UV and X-ray laser science, including an extreme UV/X-ray station that was used for the first irradiation of cells for DNA damage and repair studies in the CLF, and flash spectroscopy that can run at a trillionth-of-a-second. 

The CLF develops the pioneering technique of Optical Parametric Chirped-Pulse Amplification (OPCPA), which enables high-power lasers to break the one-petawatt ceiling and reach new, higher power levels. Titania, the successor to Sprite, opens on 2nd April 1996. It provides the highest brightness and shortest pulse of any high-power UV laser in the world.

The Astra high power laser opens for exploring intense laser matter interactions and the physics of extreme energy densities. This laser will eventually become the building block for Gemini.

The Pirate project launches, revolutionising tunable lasers for studying chemical and biological events on the trillionths-of-a-second timescale. Researchers use Vulcan to generate highly energetic and directional gamma beams that can image through very dense objects with high resolution, opening up a world of new applications.

By 2000, the CLF establishes a laser tweezers lab, where small objects like cells can be grabbed, moved around, and held mid-air using lasers.

The CLF creates a spin-out company, called L3 Technology Ltd, to develop medical applications for an optical spectroscopy technique that can be used to tell good cholesterol from bad. This company ran for nearly 20 years.

Vulcan is upgraded, adding an additional beamline at the petawatt level, delivering 10,000 times more power than the UK's national grid in a single flash (pulse) of infrared light.

Using the Astra laser, UK researchers demonstrate the world's first high-quality, high-energy electron beams by driving the laser into a puff of supersonic gas. This makes the front cover of the scientific journal Nature, which dubs Astra the 'dream beam' and is currently the CLF's most highly cited paper.

The Guinness Book of World Records certifies Vulcan as the world's most intense laser, and CLF scientists invent and patent a technique called Spatially Offset Raman Spectroscopy (SORS), which can “fingerprint” exactly what is inside an object without cutting or damaging it.

The Astra laser is upgraded to become the Gemini laser, making the CLF the first facility in the world to provide a dual-beam system of high power, super-intense light.

The Artemis facility opens, providing ultra-short, coherent flashes of extreme UV. This allows researchers to create movies of electrons moving within molecules and 2D materials such as graphene. Cobalt Light Systems spins out, utilising the patented CLF invention, SORS. You are likely to have come across SORS scanners whilst in airport security without realising!

The Ultra facility opens for users. Ultra can produce extremely fast flashes of light in almost any colour, which allows scientists to capture freeze-frames of chemical and biological reactions. The CLF establishes spin-out company Scitech Precision, which supplies bespoke microtargets for high power laser experiments worldwide.

As the LSF moves into the Research Complex at Harwell building, the CLF adds a new facility called Octopus. This suite of laser microscopes opens up a new world of biological research for CLF users. Within its first year, researchers using Octopus make important discoveries in the field of cancer research and more.

Recognising how rapidly science and laser technology is advancing, the CLF sets up the Centre for Advanced Laser Technology and Applications (CALTA), with the main mission to develop new laser technologies and provide a platform for technology transfer in high-value engineering sectors, such as aerospace, automotive and nuclear.

The CLF’s CALTA team develop and patent technology for the DiPOLE laser. This laser can fire ten-times a second, and is a key technology for commercial-scale laser accelerators and fusion drivers.

Researchers use the Gemini laser to demonstrate an effect first hypothesised by Albert Einstein in 1905. He predicted that a reflection from a mirror moving close to the speed of light could generate bright light pulses with short wavelengths, and this is observed for the first time in practice.

Researchers use Vulcan to create supernovas - tiny exploding stars - in the lab. This becomes one of Physics World's top 10 science breakthroughs of the year. Ultra LIFEtime is created, giving the CLF the unique ability to explore the dynamics of chemical reactions and molecules across their whole lifetime, like slo-mo shots with a frame rate approaching a millionth of a billionth of a second.

DiPOLE100, developed and built by the CLF, is delivered to the HiLASE facility in the Czech Republic. This remarkable laser is the first of its class and can generate ten 100-joule pulses each second.

Artemis laser is packed up and moved from its home in the south-west end of site to the north-east. It joins its sister laser, Ultra, in the Research Complex at Harwell.

The CALTA team completes and begins shipping a commissioned laser for Europe’s X-ray free election laser (XFEL). Destined to become the end station HiBEF, D100-X is a unique combination of high energy (100 to 150J) with a rapid shot repetition rate of 10 times a second, making it excellent at experiments related to extreme physics, such as astrophysics.

On 13th February, Nobel Laureate Donna Strickland and Science Minister Chris Skidmore host the groundbreaking ceremony for a new facility, the Extreme Photonics Applications Centre (EPAC). The successor to Gemini, EPAC will deliver a bullet of light as hot as the Sun to a target ten times a second. This facility will be designated to laser-driven particle acceleration; a first of its kind.

In a major upgrade, Artemis installs a new system capable of delivering a shot every one hundredth of a millisecond, as well as a new extreme ultraviolet beamline.

With engineering now being the CLF’s largest department, a new building called the Engineering and Technology Centre (ETC) is built. It houses state-of-the art machining and micro-machining technology.

Vulcan 20-20 is announced. This major upgrade will deliver an extreme high peak power 20PW beam (equivalent to light from 20 of the Earth’s suns focusing onto the head of a single pin) together with a cluster of beams delivering up to 20 kilojoules of energy into two experimental areas.

CLF scientists go to the UK’s Natural History Museum with a hand-held Spatially Offset Raman Spectroscopy (SORS) detector to analyse Charles Darwin’s collection of animals in jars. 2025 is 20 years since the SORS imaging technique was invented at the CLF.

The HiLUX project, a massive upgrade to the Artemis and Ultra facilities, opens its doors to users for the first time. The new laser can switch colours instantly, and contains lasers the size of a shoebox that once took up an entire room. DiPOLE Systems becomes a spin-out company to supply next-generation lasers.