By Dean Murray
The US has a new, most powerful laser, creating more than 100 times the global electricity power output.
The ZEUS (Zettawatt-Equivalent Ultrashort pulse laser System) laser facility at the University of Michigan has roughly doubled the peak power of any other laser in the U.S. with its first official experiment at 2 petawatts (2 quadrillion watts).
It's huge power lasts only for the brief duration of its laser pulse -- just 25 quintillionths of a second long.
"This milestone marks the beginning of experiments that move into unexplored territory for American high field science," said Karl Krushelnick, director of the Gérard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Science, which houses ZEUS.
The University of Michigan says research at ZEUS will have applications in medicine, national security, materials science and astrophysics, in addition to plasma science and quantum physics.
Supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, ZEUS is a user facility, meaning that research teams from all over the country and internationally can submit experiment proposals that go through an independent selection process.
"One of the great things about ZEUS is it's not just one big laser hammer, but you can split the light into multiple beams," said Franklin Dollar, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine, whose team is running the first user experiment at 2 petawatts. "Having a national resource like this, which awards time to users whose experimental concepts are most promising for advancing scientific priorities, is really bringing high-intensity laser science back to the U.S."
This demonstration of ZEUS's power paves the way for the signature experiment, expected later this year, when the accelerated electrons will collide with laser pulses coming the opposite way. Michigan Engineering say that in the moving frame of the electrons, the 3-petawatt laser pulse will seem to be a million times more powerful -- a zettawatt-scale pulse. This gives ZEUS its full name of "Zettawatt Equivalent Ultrashort laser pulse System."
"The fundamental research done at the NSF ZEUS facility has many possible applications, including better imaging methods for soft tissues and advancing the technology used to treat cancer and other diseases," said Vyacheslav Lukin, program director in the NSF Division of Physics, which oversees the ZEUS project. "Scientists using the unique capabilities of ZEUS will expand the frontiers of human knowledge in new ways and provide new opportunities for American innovation and economic growth."
The ZEUS team has already spent a total of 15 months running user experiments since the grand opening in October 2023 but say there is still plenty of science that could be done with a 1 petawatt laser.
So far, it has welcomed 11 separate experiments with a total of 58 experimenters from 22 institutions, including international researchers. Over the next year -- between user experiments -- the ZEUS team will continue upgrading the system toward its full power.