Thomas of University of Mainz, Germany and University of Adelaide, Australia

A few years after the first demonstration of the laser, precision industries, like the watch factory Kienzle in

Germany, made use of lasers for their production lines. Now multi-kW lasers are routinely used in Heavy

Industry. The use energy created by lasers to start Nuclear Fusion was proposed during the 1960s, but it

took until 2022 before the first useful laser energy induced nuclear fusion was demonstrated. Today a large

number of research centres, enhanced by many start-up companies, like HB11 Energy in Australia, are working

on the commercialisation of the European initiated, High Power laser Energy Research (HiPER), pilot facility for

this unlimited future energy source.

Biography:

Thomas Kuehl received his PhD at Mainz GSI after a thesis at CERN, Geneva. Following a

post-doc time at MIT, he became leader of the laser group at the GSI accelerator. Since the

end of the 1990s he is actively pursuing the field of laser induced Fusion Energy. He was one

of the initiators and builders of the petawatt-class PHELIX laser project. He is member of a

number of international boards and committees. He has published 200 refereed articles and is

one of the authors of “The future of laser induced fusion energy in Europe, a roadmap”

published in High Power Laser Science and Engineering , Volume 11 , 2023 , e83DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1017/hpl.2023.80