The world's most powerful laser beam.

In Romania, a laser located at the Thales research center can reach a peak power of 10 petawatts for a very short period of time.

The research center houses the world's most powerful laser. Photo: AFP — The research center houses the world's most powerful laser. Photo: *AFP*

In the control room of a research center in Romania, engineer Antonia Toma activated the world's most powerful laser beam, promising to revolutionize fields from medicine to space. The laser machine at the center near Romania's capital, Bucharest, is operated by the French company Thales and utilizes a Nobel Prize-winning invention, AFP reported on March 31. Researchers Gerard Mourou (France) and Donna Strickland (Canada) won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics for harnessing the power of lasers to create highly precise devices for eye surgery and industrial applications.

At the center, in front of a wall covered with beam-display screens, Toma checks a series of indicator devices before beginning the countdown. On the other side of the glass, long rows of red and black boxes contain two laser systems. The scale of operation at the research center is enormous. The system can reach a peak power of 10 petawatts (one petawatt equals 10 to the power of 15 watts) for an ultra-short time of femtoseconds (one femtosecond equals one quadrillionth of a second). Engineers had to carefully install 450 tons of equipment to achieve this exceptional performance, according to Franck Leibreich, managing director of laser solutions at Thales.

Mourou admitted he was deeply moved by the extraordinary journey from the United States, where he had worked for 30 years, to bring the project to fruition in Europe. The project originated in the 2000s from the European Union's larger ELI Infrastructure project.

The high-tech building, which houses the research center, cost $350 million to build, primarily from the European Union. Thames said this is the largest investment in scientific research in Romania. Meanwhile, countries including France, China, and the United States are pushing their own projects to produce even more powerful lasers.

Scientists have always sought to create even more powerful lasers. However, in the mid-1980s, they encountered a hurdle: they couldn't increase power without compromising beam amplification. That's when Mourou and his then-student, Strickland, invented a technique called chirped-pulse amplification (CPA), which allowed for safe power and amplification.

This technique works by stretching an ultrashort laser pulse, amplifying it, and compressing it again, creating the world's shortest and most powerful laser pulse. CPA has already been applied in eye surgery, but it could pave the way for scientists to further push the boundaries of laser technology. "We will use this ultra-powerful pulse to produce more compact, inexpensive particle accelerators" to destroy cancer cells, Mourou said.

Other potential applications include processing radioactive waste by reducing its radioactive lifetime or cleaning up space debris. For Mourou, the past century belonged to electrons, while the 21st century is the age of lasers.

An Khang (According to AFP/Phys.org )

Source link