For much of the past 60 years, the U.S. research community dominated the discovery of new crystalline materials and the growth of large single crystals, placing the country at the forefront of fundamental advances in condensed-matter sciences and fueling the development of many of the new technologies at the core of U.S. economic growth. The opportunities offered by future developments in this field remain as promising as the achievements of the past. However, the past 20 years have seen a substantial deterioration in the United States' capability to pursue those opportunities at a time when several European and Asian countries have significantly increased investments in developing their own capacities in these areas. This book seeks both to set out the challenges and opportunities facing those who discover new crystalline materials and grow large crystals and to chart a way for the United States to reinvigorate its efforts and thereby return to a position of leadership in this field.

 

 

 

Since the 1990s, the pace of discovery in the field of solar and space physics has accelerated, largely owing to NASA investments in its Heliophysics Great Observatory fleet of spacecraft. These enable researchers to investigate connections between events on the Sun and in the space environment by combining multiple points of view. Recognizing the importance of observations of the Sun-to-Earth system, the National Research Council produced a solar and space physics decadal survey in 2003, laying out the Integrated Research Strategy. This strategy provided a prioritized list of flight missions, plus theory and modeling programs, that would advance the relevant physical theories, incorporate those theories in models that describe a system of interactions between the Sun and the space environment, obtain data on the system, and analyze and test the adequacy of the theories and models. Five years later, this book measures NASA's progress toward the goals and priorities laid out in the 2003 study. Unfortunately, very little of the recommended priorities will be realized before 2013. Mission cost growth, reordering of survey mission priorities, and unrealized budget assumptions have delayed nearly all of the recommended NASA spacecraft missions. The resulting loss of synergistic capabilities in space will constitute a serious impediment to future progress.

 

Since the late 1960s, the Navy has been conducting research to develop a megawatt-class directed-energy weapon using laser technology. The Navy settled on the free-electron laser (FEL) as the best candidate for naval applications and initiated its FEL program in the mid-1990s. To date, researchers have demonstrated an FEL producing 14 kilowatts (KW) of continuous-wave power of infrared light. The next step proposed by the Navy is to demonstrate and study a 100 KW FEL system to establish the technology needed for scaling to the megawatt level in the infrared wavelength region. To assist in planning its next steps, the Navy has asked the NRC to review the current state of the art and anticipated advances for high-average-power FELs, and to analyze the capabilities, constraints, and trade-offs of the FEL to achieve the goal of a megawatt-class output beam at wavelengths of 1-2 micrometers. Additional steps would be needed to make the FEL into a useable, shipboard defensive weapon. This report describes the state of the art and anticipated advances for high-average-power FEL technology across the FEL community and it provides a detailed assessment of those technologies and challenges for future development.