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World's Most Powerful Laser Diode Arrays Deployed

Posted by Soulskill on from the aside-from-the-secret-white-house-defense-lasers dept.

Zothecula writes: The High-Repetition-Rate Advanced Petawatt Laser System (HAPLS) under construction in the Czech Republic is designed to generate a peak power of more than 1 petawatt. The key component to this instrument – the laser "pump" – will be a set of solid-state laser diode arrays recently constructed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. At peak power, this electronic assemblage develops a staggering 3.2 million watts of power and are the most powerful laser diode arrays ever built.

63 comments

  1. Don't look at the... by Prof.Phreak · · Score: 3, Informative

    Laser Diode Arrays with remaining eye.

    --

    "If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy

    1. Re:Don't look at the... by jimmydevice · · Score: 1

      Laser in your next life.

    2. Re:Don't look at the... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Didn't read the article, but some of these tera/petawatt laser systems for research deliver a very wide beam and extremely short pulses.

      In some setups you could in theory stand in the beampath and look into the source without any risk.

    3. Re:Don't look at the... by bolek_b · · Score: 4, Funny

      Don't worry, we don't have any sharks in Czech Republic, we are a landlocked country. At best, we could come up with laser-bearing carps or catfish.

    4. Re:Don't look at the... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I'm pretty sure this would blind you so hard that your children would inherit blindness. Even the ones already born.

    5. Re:Don't look at the... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Look at this, and I'm pretty sure both you don't have a remaining eye. Or a head, for that matter.

    6. Re:Don't look at the... by some+old+guy · · Score: 2

      You go first.

      --
      Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
    7. Re:Don't look at the... by necro81 · · Score: 1

      Don't look at the Laser Diode Arrays with remaining half of skull.

    8. Re:Don't look at the... by d34thm0nk3y · · Score: 1

      Don't look at the Laser Diode Arrays with remaining eye.

      More like: Don't look at the Laser Diode Arrays with remaining head.

      Yes Zaphod, you.

    9. Re: Don't look at the... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The term "coherent barbecue" comes to mind.

    10. Re:Don't look at the... by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      I was just thinking of any silos holding corn that are in the beam path; the YouTube videos will be epic!

    11. Re:Don't look at the... by whopub · · Score: 1

      A leaked Pentagon memo I had access to states that the ultimate weapon will be laser-turtles. Stability is a huge concern, to maximize accuracy and prevent friendly fire incidents. The fact that they already have armor was also factored in.

  2. High-repetition-rate... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If this article is posted as comment the "wise" filter here will reject it as having too much "high-repetition".

    And it will be useful at last.

  3. I can now by invictusvoyd · · Score: 1

    Finally have my shark tank with lazer beams attached to their heads ... mwahahhaha

    1. Re:I can now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Finally have my shark tank with lazer beams attached to their heads ... mwahahhaha

      you're the reason i'm pro-choice.

    2. Re:I can now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In some cases pro-choice is not enough.

    3. Re:I can now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The word is "laser" you boring, illiterate nitwit.

    4. Re:I can now by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 1

      According to an article posted yesterday it can be either. Your stylistic convention is just different from the GP. ;-)

    5. Re:I can now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Light Amplification by Ztimulated Emission of Radiation. Damn my third grade teacher, she gave me a C- because I spelled "ztimulated" according to a convention she did not agree with!

    6. Re:I can now by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 1

      She probably hadn't watched Dr. Strangelove.

    7. Re:I can now by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      The one thing I keep thinking is, "why would a U.S. research group put a peta watt anything somewhere far away for testing; and in this case, a place with lots of rocky mountains?"

  4. But... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    can they mount it on a shark's forehead?

  5. Consistency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is it 1 petawatt or 3.2 gigawatts?

    1. Re:Consistency by Duvzo · · Score: 1

      It's a LASER - the A stands for Amplification

    2. Re:Consistency by joe_frisch · · Score: 4, Interesting

      the pump is probably 3.2MW for a long pulse (100s of microseconds), and the output is petawatts for a short time (femtoseconds).Diodes are often used to pump solid state laser materials that store energy for many microseconds, then release it much more quickly. (along with chirp pulse amplification to get even larger power compression).

    3. Re:Consistency by aliquis · · Score: 1

      It doesn't draw 3.2 gigawatt from the power grid but fires 1 petawatt of light energy (or used by the lasers?) when it's actually fire.

      As in at most fire 1/300 of the time.

    4. Re:Consistency by aliquis · · Score: 1

      Sorry. Didn't cared about the units here.

      The point was more important than being correct =P

      1/300 000 of the time :)

    5. Re:Consistency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In a word: Modelocking.

      The 1 petawatt is the peak power. The 3.2 gigawatts is the linear sum of the peak powers of the laser diodes in the array. Because the laser diodes are slightly different frequencies, it results in periods of zero power and periods of enormous instantaneous power. You should look up modelocking to really understand why the instantaneous power of a modelocked system is significantly higher than the sum of it's input power; but suffice it to say, the same energy is concentrated in a much smaller duration pulse, so the RMS power is the same.

  6. Lost Opportunity by deek · · Score: 2

    If only they had called it the High-repetition-rate Advanced Petawatt Laser Emission SyStem.

    1. Re:Lost Opportunity by Brad1138 · · Score: 1

      I see what you did there.

      --
      If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
  7. A dildo array by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    shove it deep

  8. 1 Petawatt? by The_One_Ring · · Score: 0

    Won't that melt the DVD?

    --
    ---- Now, where did I put that knife.....
  9. Frickin' shark compatible? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now iwe just need to figure out how to attach them to frickin' sharks...

  10. Great. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What's it used for?

    1. Re:Great. by Rei · · Score: 2

      Haven't even read the article, but I can tell you that such a thing is pretty much an essential requirement to have a chance of commercializing any sort of laser-driven inertial confinement fusion. A fusion reactor that can only fire off a pulse once every day or so is pretty worthless ;) The other high repetition rate component that you need is a high repetition precision injection of holhraums.

      There's two main types of reactors in particular to which this would apply. First you have your pure inertial confinement fusion schemes, like NIF, where it's all about single super-high energy compression pulses. Secondly you have your hybrid inertial confinement approaches like HiPER where you combine a weaker compression pulse with a thermal pulse so that you don't need to achieve such extreme compression. I'm personally rather fond of the second, but it's not as mature.

      --
      "TAMS shouldn't be destroyed. They should just tag us before releasing us into the wild." -- Maeglin
    2. Re:Great. by fractoid · · Score: 1

      It goes 'pew pew'.

      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
    3. Re:Great. by PPH · · Score: 1

      Popcorn.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    4. Re: Great. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thank you.

    5. Re:Great. by Erbo · · Score: 1

      "Making enormous Swiss cheese?"

      --
      Be who you are...and be it in style!
  11. In other news... by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 4, Funny

    World's largest cat goes mental

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    1. Re:In other news... by Grench · · Score: 1

      My mod points lapsed; if they hadn't, you'd have got a "Funny" from me because I laughed. Thanks for that! :D

      --
      He's Jesus, for Christ's sake.
    2. Re:In other news... by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 3, Funny

      A complimentary comment is worth to me than mod points.

      But not as much as cash, so, y'know, if you really want to show your appreciation...

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    3. Re:In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does that cat have a permanent position in the Russian Duma?

  12. Nerdy facts about this pulse by DrTJ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    T=30fs, P=1PW => E=30J
    Each pulse carries about 30 joules of energy.
    The pulse only lasts for 30 fs. In that time, it travels s=30fs*300 000 000 m/s = 9 um.
    The pulse is thus only 9 microns thick.

    They don't state the wavelength in the article, but since they say laser and not maser or IR laser, it's visible.
    With a nice green colour, i.e. 500 nm, the pulse is only 18 wavelengths long.

    The energy of each (green) photon is E=hc/lamda = 2.2E-20 J. Thus, each pulse packs about
    30J/2.2E-20J = 1.36E21 photons. [That's 1.5E26 photons per meter (mass of earth ~5E24 kg).]

    Good job, coordinating that rather sizable pack of riotous photons in a timely manner.

    1. Re:Nerdy facts about this pulse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know. To me if someone says diode laser I think anything in the range 850-1550 nm because these are the wavelengths that correspond to bandgaps in common III-V semiconductor compounds.

    2. Re:Nerdy facts about this pulse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, there is certainly not a shortage of high-power near-IR/ IR laser diodes available. Diodes down to 375nm can be had, but those are quite a bit more expensive on a per watt basis.

  13. How not to edit a story by Andy_R · · Score: 2

    If you're going to edit an article, don't just cut out the least significant words, or you'll be left with nonsense.

    According to the summary, this laser somehow generates power instead of consuming it, and it generates "3.2 million watts of power", which is "more than 1 petawatt".

    --
    A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
  14. Things sure have changed... by sabbede · · Score: 3, Interesting
    When I was a kid, Czechoslovakia was a Soviet satellite hidden behind the Iron Curtain and a fog of evil. Now, one of our government's top research labs is building a big-ass laser (death ray) there.

    The future really is a much nicer place than the past.

  15. Quick Call Agent P by TargetBoy · · Score: 1

    The project lead is one Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz!

    Link for further proof: http://phineasandferb.wikia.com/wiki/S%27Winter/Transcript

  16. Mod parent down by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is the 21St Century. Get w/ the times. We know what he means already, not needed for a tough explanation using fancy grammer.

  17. Mandatory Star Wars Reference by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now let them feel the power of this fully operational battle HAPLS

  18. Big Ole Laser by jjbenz · · Score: 2

    Is it too late to make a comment about the Death Star?

    1. Re:Big Ole Laser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes.

    2. Re:Big Ole Laser by neo-mkrey · · Score: 1

      No, it is never too late for a Star Wars reference.

  19. Combine that with a large spinning mirror, by Thatto · · Score: 1

    ...and you could vaporize a human target from space.

    1. Re:Combine that with a large spinning mirror, by Erbo · · Score: 1

      Or pop a lot of popcorn.

      --
      Be who you are...and be it in style!
    2. Re:Combine that with a large spinning mirror, by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Combine a lot of these with an ascending rocket and you could have a beam-powered launch vehicle. ;-)

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    3. Re:Combine that with a large spinning mirror, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Stop touching yourself!

  20. What's it for by Echo_Hotel · · Score: 1

    Or in layman's terms "They'll use it for doing fusion reaction experiments more quickly"

    1. Re:What's it for by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      That's cool; so where are they getting the H3?

  21. laser pointer by kimvette · · Score: 1

    when can I buy this in the form of a laser pointer for my cat?

    --
    The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
  22. Spinning Mirror by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You've increased it to 3.2 Megawatts?. What would you use it for?