The University of Michigan is home to the most powerful laser in the country

ANN ARBOR – The National Science Foundation recently awarded $ 18.5 million to the University of Michigan’s 3-petawatt ZEUS laser to help make it an international user facility.

ZEUS, which is funded by the federal government, will start experiments in early 2022.

“We are very much looking forward to the exciting experiments that this new system will make possible,” said Karl Krushelnick, Director of the Center for Ultrafast Optical Science, where the construction work on ZEUS has now been completed.

The United States built the world’s first petawatt laser in 1996, but has since fallen behind on the global stage as other countries pursue more ambitious systems.

Europe has two 10-petawatt lasers, while China is planning to build a 100-petawatt system with a 5.3-petawatt laser.

“Although the new laser doesn’t offer that much raw power, its approach simulates a laser that is about a million times more powerful than its 3 petawatts,” said a UM press release.

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Researchers will use ZEUS to study extreme plasmas – charged gases that are created when electrons break away from their atoms.

“Extremplasma, produced with ‘table-top’ laser technology, offers a more cost-effective alternative for basic research in physics compared to large particle accelerators, which cost billions to build,” said the project manager of the ZEUS building, Franko Bayer, in a press release. “We are very excited because this support enables the US plasma science community and us at UM to develop long-term research plans.”

Experiments with ZEUS should contribute to a fundamental understanding of physics and the universe, including the question of how black holes can create jets, how materials transform in rapid periods of time, and how highly efficient particle accelerators can be better developed for medical treatment and imaging.

One of his first experiments will turn gas atoms into plasma by sending ultrashort laser pulses with half a petawatt of power at gas targets every second. The system will slowly increase to full performance over two years and begin user operations and signature experiments in October 2023.

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“This setup will eventually send the laser beam at full power into a vacuum chamber, where the laser beam is focused on a gas target, with a colliding electron beam traveling in the opposite direction and simulating a Zetawatt laser with much higher power,” says a UM -Press release. “While a petawatt is a quadrillion watt or a 1 followed by 15 zeros, a zetawatt is 1 trillion watt or a 1 followed by 21 zeros.”

ZEUS therefore stands for “Zetawatt Equivalent Ultrashort pulse laser system”.

In the long term, it is planned that ZEUS will be operated as an open user facility as the most powerful laser in the USA for at least a decade.

When the facility reaches full capacity, NSP will increase its funding and provide $ 5.5 million in the fall of 2025, the final year of the award.

International experimental teams will travel to UM to carry out experiments with ZEUS. Due to the federal funding status, researchers whose proposals are accepted by an external committee of engineers and scientists can research at the facility free of charge.

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“We look forward to the vastly expanded capabilities and access to the highest intensity lasers that the NSF ZEUS user facility will make available to the US and international scientific communities,” said Vyacheslav (Slava) Lukin, NSF’s plasma physics program director .

“From the fundamental physics of light and matter to powerful astrophysical phenomena such as blazars to compact particle accelerators, users of the facility will explore a wide range of phenomena and at the same time push the boundaries of technology.”

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