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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.

1 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.