US fires world’s most powerful laser ever, 100 times brighter than global power

Interestingly, the laser’s immense power lasted just a fleeting 25 quintillionths of a second. Yet, in that fleeting moment, ZEUS can unlock profound scientific discoveries.

“This milestone marks the beginning of experiments that move into unexplored territory for American high field science,” said Karl Krushelnick, director of the Gérard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Science. 

Its applications are wide-ranging, including medicine, national security, materials science, astrophysics, plasma science, and quantum physics.

Powerful laser bursts

The school gymnasium-sized Zettawatt Equivalent Ultrashort laser pulse System (ZEUS) operates out of the Gérard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Science. BBC reported that the facility’s walls are lined with 24-inch (60 cm) concrete shielding to contain radiation.

Reportedly, the ZEUS laser is the successor to the HERCULES system, which had a maximum power of 300 terawatts.

As a pulsed laser, ZEUS fires incredibly short bursts, just a few quintillionths of a second in duration. 

The incredibly robust and concentrated laser energy will allow experts to explore fundamental quantum mechanics, simulate cosmic events, and much more. 

The innovative laser approach involves a longer gas cell filled with helium.

When the powerful laser pulse strikes a gas, it generates plasma, a mix of free electrons and ions. These electrons are then accelerated to incredibly high speeds by surfing the laser’s wake, a method called wakefield acceleration. 

Using a less dense, longer target allows these electrons more time to accelerate, achieving unprecedented velocities.

This 2-petawatt milestone is a key milestone towards ZEUS’s “signature experiment,” which might happen later this year.

In this experiment, the accelerated electrons will collide head-on with laser pulses traveling in the opposite direction. The 3-petawatt laser pulse will be a million times more powerful — effectively a zettawatt-scale pulse —  hence the name ZEUS.

Price tag of $16 million

Funded by the National Science Foundation, ZEUS welcomes research teams from across the entire country.

Professor Franklin Dollar’s team at the University of California is leading the first user experiment at ZEUS. 

The goal is to generate beams comparable in energy to those from massive, hundreds-of-meters-long particle accelerators, achieving 5 to 10 times higher energy than previously possible at the ZEUS facility.

During his doctoral research, Dollar utilized ZEUS’s predecessor to image a damselfly. This work demonstrated the potential of laser-like X-ray pulses for low-dose imaging of soft tissues.

“The fundamental research done at the NSF ZEUS facility has many possible applications, including better imaging methods for soft tissues and advancing the technology used to treat cancer and other diseases,” said Vyacheslav Lukin, program director in the NSF Division of Physics, which oversees the ZEUS project. 

Even at a lower power of one petawatt, ZEUS has already hosted numerous user experiments, welcoming researchers worldwide. 

The facility was constructed at a price tag of $16 million, reported PopSci. 

The under-construction UK’s Vulcan 20-20 laser is reportedly designed to become the world’s most powerful laser. It is expected to produce a beam “a million, billion, billion times brighter than the most intense sunlight.”