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.
Table of Contents |
skim chapter | |
---|---|---|
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 |
The National Academies Press and the Transportation Research Board have partnered with Copyright Clearance Center to offer a variety of options for reusing our content. You may request permission to:
For most Academic and Educational uses no royalties will be charged although you are required to obtain a license and comply with the license terms and conditions.
For information on how to request permission to translate our work and for any other rights related query please click here.
For questions about using the Copyright.com service, please contact:
Copyright Clearance Center
22 Rosewood Drive
Danvers, MA 01923
Tel (toll free): 855/239-3415 (select option 1)
E-mail: info@copyright.com
Web: https://www.copyright.com
Loading stats for Opportunities in Intense Ultrafast Lasers: Reaching for the Brightest Light...