Experiments at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) require breathtaking precision. Each of the 192 lasers is focused to a width of a few millimeters to enter a 3-millimeter hole at the top or bottom of a 2-centimeter (0.8-inch) gold canister known as a hohlraum.

As they enter, the beams intersect in plasma and transfer power, a process known as crossed-beam energy transfer (CBET). In designing a NIF inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiment, scientists precisely tune the beams’ wavelengths to balance power via CBET and achieve better symmetry.

Small changes in wavelength have delivered big results—CBET is one key factor in achieving ignition on NIF. But what would be the effect of a more significant change in the laser architecture, namely its polarization state? LLNL scientists have calculated that this change would make the optics more resilient to filamentation damage.

As our world’s population grows, so does the demand for ammonia—a key ingredient in fertilizer. The International Renewable Energy Agency estimates that ammonia production must quadruple by 2050 to feed the increase in global population.

The current gold standard process for producing ammonia is energy-intensive and a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. Invented in the early 1900s, the Haber-Bosch method requires mixing hydrogen and nitrogen gas at 400–500 degrees Celsius. It’s responsible for nearly 2% of global carbon dioxide emissions and accounts for 2% of fossil energy use.

Researchers from McMaster University have developed a process that is green and faster, generates ammonia more efficiently from nitrate—a common water pollutant—and is “cleaner” because it uses renewable electricity rather than fossil fuel.

If the U.S. could tap into just 2 percent of the geothermal power beneath Earth’s crust, it could supply more than 2,000 times our total annual energy consumption.