University of Michigan Built America's Most Powerful Laser Test Device

A newly built facility at the University of Michigan will become the site of the most powerful laser in the United States. Its first experiment will be held this week, because the United States is seeking to be competitive again in the field of high-power laser equipment.

The experiment will be carried out at ZEUS (abbreviation for Zettawatt equivalent ultrashort pulse laser system) by researchers at the University of California, Irvine. They went to Ann Arbor to study the extremely strong interaction between light and matter, and how to use this interaction to reduce the particle accelerator.

The maximum power of ZEUS will be 3 petawatt laser.
Louise Willingale, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science in Michigan, said: "Three watts is three, followed by 15 zeros.".

She said: "The power of three watts is 3000 times that of the US power grid".
The National Science Foundation of the United States awarded Michigan $18.5 million to establish ZEUS as a federally funded international user facility.

Initially, the facility is located in a building where the G é rard Mourou Ultrafast Optical Science Center of U-M is located, and will accommodate research teams to conduct experiments that use a small part of the full power potential of lasers. The system will gradually increase, and ZEUS is expected to start its landmark experiment in the autumn of 2023.

The United States built the world's first petawatt laser 25 years ago, but failed to keep up with more ambitious systems in Europe and Asia. Although the original power of ZEUS is different from that of its overseas counterparts, its method will simulate a laser with a power about 1 million times higher than its 3 petawatt power.

ZEUS will mainly study extreme plasma, which is a state of matter in which electrons have enough energy to escape from atoms and produce charged particles in the ocean. Almost all visible universes are made of plasma. The sun is an example of plasma.

It is expected that the experiment will help to understand how the universe operates at the subatomic level and how materials change at a rapid time scale. Scientists also hope that they can develop smaller, more compact particle accelerators for medical imaging and treatment.

"ZEUS will have a wide range of applications in science, technology, engineering and medicine," said Willingale.

Proposals using ZEUS will be evaluated by an external team of scientists and engineers. With the support of the National Science Foundation of the United States, users who have been selected to conduct research on the experimental proposal will not have to pay any fees except for their own travel expenses to the facilities.

Willingale said that these proposals will be selected based on scientific value and technical feasibility.

Last week, Franklin Dollar, an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California Irvine, and four graduate students from the University of California Irvine arrived in Michigan to prepare for their experiments.

"One of the main challenges in our field is to obtain high-quality, powerful lasers," Dollar said. "ZEUS will not only become the most powerful laser beam on the European continent, but perhaps more importantly, it will provide multiple powerful beams.

He said: "It is not only to use laser to make high-energy plasma, but also to use a second beam of light to interact with plasma."

ZEUS is an upgraded version of the University of Michigan 0.5 megawatt laser, which is called "HERCULES".

Although researchers in Michigan were excited about the birth of ZEUS, they also realized that their naming convention was not completely consistent with the chronological order of Greek mythology.

"HERCULES is the ancestor of ZEUS," Wellington said. "This is a little backward, because HERCULES is the son of ZEUS."

"Therefore, we make fathers by our sons."

Source: Guangxingtianxia