Welcome to THRILL’s second newsletter!
#2 – WINTER 2025
After almost three years in motion, the THRILL consortium is pleased to report on our most recent achievements in this second newsletter. As we enter the final year of the project, our focus remains on delivering new schemes and devices for pushing forward the limits of research infrastructures of European relevance and ESFRI landmarks.
Enjoy reading!
Vincent Bagnoud, Project coordinator
THRILL General Assembly 2025
From 23-24 June 2025, the THRILL consortium gathered in Hamburg, Germany, for this year’s General Assembly, hosted by our partners at European XFEL. The meeting opened with a comprehensive status update by project coordinator Vincent Bagnoud, who reviewed key milestones, deliverables, and project highlights from recent months. This summary set the stage for a full day of presentations from all work-package and task leaders, many of which sparked lively and productive discussions among attendees.
THRILL Postdoc Jonas Ohland awarded BMFTR grant to launch young investigator group “ALADIN”
The THRILL consortium is proud to announce that Jonas B. Ohland, a THRILL collaborator from the first hour, has been awarded a prestigious grant by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) under its “Fusionstalente” program. The funding will support the establishment of his own young investigator group, titled “Adaptive Laser Architecture Development and Integration” (ALADIN), launching on 1 June 2025.
OPOSSUM workshop showcases future of open-source optical simulation
Design and validation of a spherical-mirror zoom system for petawatt lasers
THRILL to adopt meta-data rich format developed within HELPMI for acquisition and exchange
Enabling high-repetition rate kJ Beams: The PAMDAM flashlamp-pumped Nd:Glass slab amplifier
9
Partners
5
Countries
4
Years
10.4M
Budget
#YoungScientists
With our new interview series “Young Scientists at THRILL”, we portrait the younger generation of researchers working on our project. They tell us about their roles in the project and what inspires them about their work.
Meet JONAS OHLAND, LASER PHYSICIST at GSI/FAIR
He is exploring how to make operating high-power lasers simpler, more stable and much more scalable.
Photo by Johannes Hornung, GSI/FAIR
Save the Date:
THRILL Summer School 2026
The next THRILL Summer School will take place in Hirschegg, Austria, from 7-13 June 2026. Lectures and directed activities will focus on Applications of High Energy / High Power Lasers. PhDs and early career scientists are invited to register – mark your calendars, applications will be accepted soon!
New publications
Chauvin, A., et al. (2025). Functional laser-induced damage threshold of aluminum coating deposited by magnetron sputtering with different power supply modes, J. Appl. Phys. 138, 173105. doi:10.1063/5.0295260
Lebegue, P., et al. (2025). Coherent beam combining strategies for high-energy and high-repetition rate lasers dedicated to inertial nuclear fusion applications, Opt. Express 33, 45615-45630. doi:10.1364/OE.574715
Metternich, M., et al. (2025). The influence of flashlamp water cooling on long-term aberrations in large aperture Nd:glass amplifiers, Proceedings Volume 13535, Research Using Extreme Light Infrastructures: New Frontiers with Petawatt-Level Lasers VI; 1353509. doi.org/10.1117/12.3058409
Lebegue, P., at al. (2025). Coherent combining of large-aperture high-energy Nd:glass laser amplifiers. High Power Laser Science and Engineering, 2025;13:e4. doi:10.1017/hpl.2024.84
A full list of THRILL’s publications, presentations, and posters can be found on the publication’s page.
Consortium
Our project consortium is composed of nine partners from five countries, plus ESRF as observer.
