TWO NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS IN PHYSICS AT THE HEART OF A 'PHOTONICS & ENERGY' EVENT

摘要

On February 17th, 2020 the ALPHA-RLH cluster organized at the Palais de la Bourse in Bordeaux an event dedicated to innovative technological solutions for the energy of the future.lt brought together nearly 150 participants: academic, industrial and institutional players. During conferences and a roundtable, experts discussed the contribution of photonics and laser technologies in the energy field, with a focus on photovoltaics, thermodynamic solar, self-consumption and the storage of intermittent energies. ALPHA-RLH was pleased and honored to welcome two distinguished guests: the French physicist Gerard Mourou and the Canadian Donna Strickland, winners of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics for their invention of the Chirped pulse amplification (CPA) technique. It consists in amplifying an ultrashort laser pulse up to the petawatt level, with the laser pulse being stretched out temporally and spectrally, then amplified, and then compressed again. They gave their vision on the relationship between laser physics and energy and proposed several applications for the future (nuclear transmutation of wastes, desorbitation of space debris).