Thales : and ICFO sign a cooperation agreement on laser technology
December 08, 2014 at 05:45 am EST
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Key points
Thales manufactures lasers for scientific and industrial markets and expands its laser activities towards the civil market.
ICFO leads research on laser technologies on a wide spectral domain.
Thales and the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Barcelona have signed a cooperation agreement for developing ultrafast mid-infrared lasers at high energy and high repetition rate.
With this collaboration, Thales, a leading player in the field of turn-key intense laser system, aims for scientific and societal applications. These new sources enable various applications, ranging from infrared spectroscopy and biomedical imaging, to particle acceleration, attoscience and table top coherent X-ray imaging and spectroscopy. This new collaboration allows Thales to expand its laser activities towards the civil market. ICFO will develop lasers in the 3 to 6 micron wavelength domain delivering ultrashort pulses. Several technologies will be developed during this programme conducted by Professor Jens Biegert's team, who are at the leading edge of Optical Parametric Chirped Pulse Amplification (OPCPA) and related pump lasers.
With 30 years of experience in laser design, Thales now develops and markets Petawatt-class intense laser systems. In 2012, Thales developed and delivered the BELLA system, the first turn-key intense laser, offering a power of more than 1 Petawatt (1 million of billions of watts) to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. This was followed by the CETAL Petawatt laser in Romania, and Thales was recently awarded a contract by the European research programme Extreme Light Infrastructure for Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP), established to produce two intense lasers of 10 Petawatts each, which will be installed in Romania.
About Thales
Thales is a global technology leader in the Aerospace, Transportation and Defence & Security markets. In 2013, the company generated revenues of €14.2 billion with 65,000 employees in 56 countries. With its 25,000 engineers and researchers, Thales has a unique capability to design, develop and deploy equipment, systems and services that meet the most complex security requirements. Thales has an exceptional international footprint, with operations around the world working with customers and local partners.
www.thalesgroup.com
About ICFO
ICFO is a research centre devoted to the science and technologies of light with fundamental and applied research programs that address standing issues such as health, renewable energies, information technologies, security and industrial processes, among others. The centre hosts over 300 professionals including researchers and PhD students, and collaborates with a wide range of companies around the world. In particular, ICFO's Corporate Liaison Program includes more than 30 national and international industries and corporations. Likewise, the institute actively promotes the creation of spin-off companies by ICFO researchers.
Thales is one of the European leaders in manufacturing and marketing of electronic equipment and systems for the defense and security, aerospace, and transportation sectors. Net sales break down by product group as follows:
- defense and security systems (53.4%): C4I defense and security systems (control and monitoring systems, communication, protection, cyber-security, and other systems), defense mission systems, naval systems, electronic war systems, drones, air operation systems (air defense, air surveillance), ground defense systems and missiles;
- aerospace systems (28.4%): avionics equipment (cockpit, cabin multimedia, and simulation equipment), space systems (satellites, payloads, etc.);
- digital identification and security solutions (18.2%).
Besides, the group owns a 35% stake in Naval Group (manufacture of naval equipment for defense and nuclear energy sectors).
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: France (29.5%), the United Kingdom (6.6%), Europe (24.8%), the United States and Canada (14%), Asia (9.4%), Near and Middle East (6%), Australia and New Zealand (4.4%) and other (5.3%).
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