From NextBigFuture.com: 100 Petawatt lasers could generate antimatter from vacuum and create commercial nuclear fusion by Brian Wang
In Shanghai, China, physicist Ruxin Li and colleagues are breaking records a pulse laser at the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF). At the center is a single cylinder of titanium-doped sapphire about the width of a Frisbee. In 2016, it achieved an unprecedented 5.3 million billion watts, or petawatts (PW). The pulses are powerful but last less than a trillionth of a second. The researchers are now upgrading their laser and hope to beat their own record by the end of this year with a 10 petawatt shot.
The Chinese group is leading the way to 100 Petawatts, says Philip
Bucksbaum, an atomic physicist at Stanford University in In the next few
years, 10-PW devices should switch on in Romania and the Czech Republic
as part of Europe’s Extreme Light Infrastructure, although the project
recently put off its goal of building a 100-PW-scale device. Physicists
in Russia have drawn up a design for a 180-PW laser known as the Exawatt
Center for Extreme Light Studies (XCELS), while Japanese researchers
have put forward proposals for a 30-PW device.
Ultrapowerful lasers have been increasing in power by 1000 times every ten years for the past forty years.
In 2015, we were at 2 petawatt lasers, now at 10 petawatts and soon 100 petawatts
In 2015, Japan fired a 2 petawatt laser and believe this could be a pathway to commercial nuclear fusion...
Full article: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/02/100-petawatt-lasers-could-generate-antimatter-from-vacuum-and-create-commercial-nuclear-fusion.html
