Superheroes on earth now have a new toy to play with, at their own peril though. The rest of you can go learn math again. Confused? We are talking about a laser beam that generates a petawatt of power, which is equal to 1,000,000,000,000,000 (quadrillion) watts. All the power plants in the United States put together would still fall short by 2000 times, for 1-trillionth of a second. This marvellous feat has been achieved by a ‘High Intensity Laser Science Group’ at the University of Texas. Dubbed as the world’s most powerful operational laser, the group’s petawatt creation is a miniature supernova by itself. However, the Nova laser developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab in 1996 holds the record for the most powerful laser ever built. The project manager of HILS Group, though, is optimistic about equalling or surpassing the Nova Laser’s 1.25 petawatt record in the near future.
A laser’s intensity is determined by the energy of the pulse and its duration. For high power, the researchers employed a Rube-Goldberg architecture in a 1500 sq ft room. The ’seed laser’ has to pass through a number of amplifiers, compressors and stretchers to reach the levels of intensity one associates with the interior of a sun for 1 trillionth of a second. The first stage in the process is running the seed laser through stretchers, where the pulse is lengthened. Using special crystals, the beam is now amplified through a process called optical parametric amplification. The stronger pulse is then fed into disk amplifiers and compressors for Petawatt power levels.
Imagine a nuclear explosion and you get it inside a laboratory. Truly, few would have envisaged that a tiny red beam in a laser toy had such illustrious cousins. Flash Gordon would be proud!
Powerful Laser Picture Gallery
Via:Wired
