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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.

3 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. 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.

  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. 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.