First Light Fusion

First Light Fusion Ltd is a British fusion research company, based in Oxfordshire, England.

Projectile fusion
The company's approach to fusion research is a particular form of inertial fusion called projectile fusion. Projectile fusion involves electromagnetically accelerating a metal projectile, firing it into a fusion target similar to that used by NIF that is embedded in a cube. The cube is termed an amplifier. It contains spherical cavities that send the projectile's energy onto the fuel capsule, focusing shock waves instead of light. The projectile speed (tens of kilometers per second) becomes an implosion speed of hundreds of kilometers per second (producing fuel pressure of 10–100 terapascals), sufficient to produce fusion.

History
The company was founded by Nicholas Hawker and his former academic adviser Yiannis Ventikos in 2011, as a research spin-off at the University of Oxford.

Ventikos had suggested forming the company based on Hawker's research into hydrodynamic simulations of shock-driven cavity collapse. Part of Hawker's PhD research had involved studying the cavity collapse caused by a pistol shrimp's claw.

In January 2023 it was announced that the company had entered an agreement with the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority to develop First Light's "Machine 4" (M4) at the UKAEA's Culham Campus. M4 will attempt to demonstrate the capacity of projectile fusion to reach net energy gain.

Belgium-based engineering company Tractebel announced the signing of a framework agreement in July 2023 to jointly develop the M4 facility with First Light.

In March 2024, the company announced that it had set a record of 1.85-terapascals with an 80-terawatt shot using the Z-machine at Sandia National Laboratories. In April 2024, the company announced that it had extended the distance its projectiles can travel without self-destructing from 1 cm to 10 cm.