For a brighter future of the global society, Japan is committed to achieving sustainable growth and becoming a pioneer in the establishment of a new social model Society 5.0. Society 5.0 is defined as a human-centered society that balances economic advancement with the resolution of social problems by a system that highly integrates cyberspace and physical space, i.e., cyber-physical system (CPS). To promote smart production and eventually realize Society 5.0 and sustainable development goals, we develop CPS laser manufacturing capable of proposing the optimal processing parameters using artificial intelligence and numerical calculations based on the science and theory of laser processing combined with massive data of high quality.

Understanding laser processing belong to multiscale and multidisciplinary cutting-edge science. For example, how atoms, molecules, and materials behave under intense laser irradiation is at the forefront of atomic, molecular, optical, and condensed-matter physics, involving highly nonlinear, dynamical processes. One of our focuses is to understand and simulate such strong laser matter interaction by combining different techniques, even starting from the first principles of quantum mechanics.

We are developing various new methods to accurately calculate the laser-driven electron dynamics and energy transfer from laser to electrons. Also, combining first-principles and molecular dynamics calculations, we start to quantitatively reproduce how atoms are ejected from a laser-irradiated surface. In the macroscopic scale, for instance, we study multiphysics modeling of complex thermal multiphase flows with phase change. We build a nation-wide collaboration network of theoreticians as well as experimentalists that develop, e.g., cutting-edge operando measurement techniques such as high-speed photography and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy.