ZEUS's First 2-Petawatt Experiment

This is a the United States news story, published by TechSpot, that relates primarily to the University of Michigan news.

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ZEUS laser facility

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NSF ZEUS facility

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Science

The most powerful laser in the US reaches 2 petawatts, setting new records

Summary

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85% Informative

The ZEUS laser facility at the University of Michigan has vaulted the United States to the forefront of high-intensity laser science.

In its first official experiment, the facility achieved a peak power of 2 petawatts twice the output of any other laser in the country.

The facility's ability to split its beam allows it to achieve intensities up to a million times greater than a single beam alone, enabling the study of extreme phenomena such as quantum vacuum structures and the creation of matter-antimatter pairs.

Since opening in October 2023 , ZEUS has hosted 11 experiments involving 58 researchers from 22 institutions.

Technical challenges emerged during the transition from the 300 -terawatt HERCULES laser to the 1-petawatt system.

Unexpected darkening of the diffraction gratings was traced to carbon deposits formed when the powerful beam interacted with residual molecules in the vacuum chamber.

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