Beijing, April 1st, Tech Daily - Physicists have recently activated the world's most powerful laser. According to a report from Physics Organization Network on March 31st, the system is capable of producing laser pulses with a peak power of 10 petawatts (1 petawatt = 10^15 watts) within just one femtosecond (one quadrillionth of a second), promising revolutionary advancements in fields ranging from medicine to fundamental physics and space exploration.
Situated in Romania, the laser belongs to a high-tech center, primarily funded by the European Union, with a staggering investment of 320 million euros, utilizing inventions from French scientist Gérard Mourou and others.
Scientists have long pursued the development of more powerful lasers. In the mid-1980s, Mourou's team devised the Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA) technique, which allows for the amplification of laser power while maintaining its intensity. The principle involves stretching ultrashort laser pulses in time, amplifying them, and then compressing them back together, resulting in the shortest and most intense laser pulses to date.
Mourou was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018 for pioneering methods to create high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses. This technology holds promise for widespread applications in fields such as nuclear and particle physics, as well as medicine. In the medical realm, it has already advanced treatments for cataracts and refractive eye surgeries.
Mourou noted that they start with a tiny, low-energy "seed" of light, which is then amplified millions of times over. They plan to utilize these ultrahigh-pressure pulses to create more compact and cost-effective particle accelerators for targeting cancer cells. Other potential applications include reducing the radioactive duration of nuclear waste and clearing debris accumulated in space.
