BELLA laser achieves world record power at one pulse per second
Friday, July 27, 2012 - 10:02
in Physics & Chemistry
On the night of July 20, 2012, the laser system of the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA), which is nearing completion at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, delivered a petawatt of power in a pulse just 40 femtoseconds long at a pulse rate of one hertz one pulse every second. A petawatt is 1015 watts, a quadrillion watts, and a femtosecond is 10-15 second, a quadrillionth of a second. No other laser system has achieved this peak power at this rapid pulse rate.