The IOP-SFP 2025 Holweck Prize awarded to Peter Norreys
Energy transport in solid-density and compressed targets
Peter Norreys is the University of Oxford’s Professor of Inertial Fusion Science, from 2013, and was Individual Merit Fellow of the Central Laser Facility, UKRI-STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, from 1990 until 2021.
The international effort to develop inertial fusion to the stage that it could be used as an energy source has been a multi-decade endeavour. It requires the 1000-fold compression of matter to densities and temperatures that mimic the compressional effect of gravity in the Sun. By irradiating and imploding a small spherical shell containing hydrogen isotopes (deuterium and tritium), either directly using intense nanosecond-duration ultra-violet laser beams or indirectly by immersing the shell in an intense bath of re-radiated X-rays, the shell rapidly compresses.
At maximum compression, the fuel’s own inertia – the tendency of matter to resist sudden acceleration – permits enough delay between implosion and following explosion for the strong but short-range nuclear force to dominate and fuse large numbers of isotope pairs into helium nuclei. During each isotope-pair fusion event, a sudden and intense release of energy occurs because the rest mass of the two fusion products (a helium nucleus and an energetic neutron) is less than the combined masses of the two fusion ions (a deuteron and a triton). The greater the number of fusion reactions, the larger the total energy generated beyond that expended to drive the compression in the first place. This heat, if captured in a surrounding blanket, can drive a steam turbine that generates electrical power.
In order to be commercially competitive, from the mid-21st century onwards, inertial fusion power plants must compete on costs with renewable energy sources (wind, solar, geothermal etc.) in the electricity market, demanding further substantial reductions in the size, and associated capital costs, of laser-drivers.
To this end, Norreys devoted himself during his career to conducting a series of fundamental experiments to characterise energy transport in solid-density and compressed targets using petawatt-class lasers, pioneering many first studies of electron and ion beam acceleration, neutron beams and ultra-bright X-ray sources. His scientific papers have focused on high energy density plasmas, among them forty-five Physical Review Letters, three articles in Science, and fifteen Nature-family articles, supported by authorship of the supporting grants to the Research Councils, with eminent colleagues in the UK, EU, US and Japan.
More specifically, he has a strong collaboration with colleagues from LULI (Laboratoire pour l’Utilisation des Lasers Intenses) at Ecole Polytechnique.
Norreys co-founded Living Optics, a highly successful computer vision company, in 2020 with his current and former graduate students, for ultrafast- and hyperspectral- imaging applications.
The Holweck Prize
This award was instituted in 1945, jointly by the French and British Physical Societies as a memorial to Fernand Holweck, Director of the Curie Laboratory of the Radium Institute in Paris, who was tortured and killed by the Gestapo during the occupation of France 1940-44.
The award is made in alternate years by the Councils of one of the two societies to a physicist selected from a list of nominees submitted by the other. The prize distinguishes exceptional work in any aspect of physics that is ongoing or has been carried out within the 10 years preceding the award.
The SFP and the IOP are proud to announce the 2025 award.