September 10, 2025
Fusion energy will be a source of continuous electricity generation that uses abundant elements as fuel, does not emit greenhouse gases, has minimal waste, and has a similar levelized cost of electricity as conventional and renewable electricity sources. Laser based inertial fusion energy directs many high energy laser pulses to compress and ignite a small fusion fuel target, producing heat and high energy particles and photons that can then be converted into electricity for commercial use. The feasibility of laser based inertial fusion energy has been demonstrated by the achievement of fusion gain of 1.5 at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2022. Blue Laser Fusion (BLF) seeks to develop a novel laser system through the implementation of a large-scale high finesse cavity, known as an optical enhancement cavity (OEC), that coherently stacks pulses temporally separated in time, resulting in short pulse generation with energies on the order of kilojoules with as fast as a 10 Hz repetition rate, and an estimated 40% wall-plug efficiency. A critical component of the BLF OEC are the mirrors which must have exceptionally high reflectivity and be exceptionally robust to withstand long-term high energy incident laser pulses. This research performed by Professor Carmen Menoni of Colorado State University is exploring novel mirror coatings specifically designed for the fusion laser application as well as test methodologies to evaluate mirror aging and high temperature performance analogous to the conditions required for commercial laser inertial fusion energy generation.