Opportunities in Intense Ultrafast Lasers: Reaching for the Brightest Light
2018

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The laser has revolutionized many areas of science and society, providing bright and versatile light sources that transform the ways we investigate science and enables trillions of dollars of commerce. Now a second laser revolution is underway with pulsed petawatt-class lasers (1 petawatt: 1 million billion watts) that deliver nearly 100 times the total world's power concentrated into a pulse that lasts less than one-trillionth of a second. Such light sources create unique, extreme laboratory conditions that can accelerate and collide intense beams of elementary particles, drive nuclear reactions, heat matter to conditions found in stars, or even create matter out of the empty vacuum.

These powerful lasers came largely from U.S. engineering, and the science and technology opportunities they enable were discussed in several previous National Academies' reports. Based on these advances, the principal research funding agencies in Europe and Asia began in the last decade to invest heavily in new facilities that will employ these high-intensity lasers for fundamental and applied science. No similar programs exist in the United States. Opportunities in Intense Ultrafast Lasers assesses the opportunities and recommends a path forward for possible U.S. investments in this area of science.

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346 pages · 7 x 10 · paperback
ISBN Paperback: 0-309-46769-1
ISBN Ebook: 0-309-46770-5
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17226/24939

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National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. Opportunities in Intense Ultrafast Lasers: Reaching for the Brightest Light. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

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Front Matter i-xviii
Summary 1-4
1 Introduction and Technical Summary 5-19
2 Stewardship in High-Intensity Laser Science and Technology 20-48
3 Current and Future Intense Source Technology 49-70
4 International Landscape 71-84
5 Science Motivation 85-125
6 Applications 126-147
7 Conclusions and Recommendations 148-152
Appendixes 153-154
Appendix A: Technical Background Summaries 155-171
Appendix B: Supplemental Information on the Underlying Laser Technology 172-262
Appendix C: Supplemental Information on the International Community 263-266
Appendix D: Medical Applications of Lasers 267-275
Appendix E: Petawatt-Class Lasers Summary 276-302
Appendix F: Bibliography of Sources 303-328

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Opportunities in Intense Ultrafast Lasers: Reaching for the Brightest Light (2018)

Chapter: Appendixes

Appendixes