The world's most powerful laser ever turned on

The world's most powerful laser was recently activated. The Physicists' Organization website reported on March 31 that the system can make laser pulses reach a peak of 10 petawatts (1 petawatt = 100 trillion watts = 1015 watts) within 1 femtosecond (1000 trillionth of a second), which is expected to promote revolutionary progress in many fields from medicine to basic physics and space.

The most powerful laser ever made is located at a research center in Romania.
Image source: Physicists' Organization website

The laser is located in Romania and is mainly funded by the European Union at a cost of 320 million euros. It uses the invention of French scientist Gérard Mourou and others.

Scientists have been working to create more powerful lasers. In the mid-1980s, Mourou's team invented chirped pulse amplification (CPA), which can increase the power of lasers while maintaining their intensity. Its working principle is to stretch ultra-short laser pulses in time, amplify them, and then squeeze them together again to create the shortest and most intense laser pulses to date.

Mourou won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics for developing a method to produce high-intensity, ultra-short light pulses. This technology is expected to be widely used in nuclear physics and particle physics, medicine and other fields. In the medical field, this technology has promoted the development of cataract and eye refractive surgery.

Mouroux points out that they will start with a tiny glowing "seed" with extremely low energy, which will be amplified millions of times. They will use these ultra-high voltage pulses to produce more compact and cheaper particle accelerators to destroy cancer cells. Other possible applications include processing nuclear waste by reducing its radioactive duration, cleaning up debris accumulated in space, etc.