The “world record” of ultra-strong and ultra-short laser output pulse power was refreshed to 5.3 petawatts in Shanghai. This Spring Festival holiday, the super-strong and ultra-short laser pointer team of the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences worked overtime to debug the equipment, and actively struggled to continuously set the world record. In the Pudong Zhangjiang and Jiading Parks of the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Mechanics, researchers who do not go home rush in the laboratory for more than ten hours a day, trying to make China’s super-strong and ultra-short laser stand the world’s technological peak.
Try to realize various scientific dreams with a laser. In 2013, the research team achieved 2 petawatts of laser amplification, breaking the 1.5 petawatts world record holder in the United States for more than ten years. After the research team more than doubled this record last year, it will double the record in the future. “After this goal is achieved, China will truly establish my country’s internationally leading position in this field.” Behind the challenge is a long-term accumulation of strength in independent research and development in a discipline field.
Although the super-strong and ultra-short laser large scientific device is located in Zhangjiang, Pudong, there are two experimental devices in the Jiading Park of the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Mechanics that continuously provide scientific support for it: one is a 2-petawatt super-short laser device, and the other one is a new generation of super-strong and ultra-short laser comprehensive experimental device.
In the early 1990s, the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Mechanics began to independently develop the core technology of super-strong and ultra-short lasers, which continuously increased the output power of the experimental device and carried out a lot of applied research on it-as a scientific research tool, only after use, Know how to further improve performance and better serve applications.
Across the corridor glass, the reporter saw that this equipment occupies a room of more than 400 square meters. All the green laser pointer have been enclosed in pipes and boxes, and scientists do experiments in the last place where the light is emitted. In recent years, scientists have tried a lot of interesting work using this device. For example, lasers drive high-energy electron beams, lasers produce antimatter, use lasers to make snow, or sculpt fine and smooth transition images at the nanometer scale, use lasers to drive proton beams and perform proton photography on the fine structures of dragonflies.