With the National Science Foundation's $ 2 million investment, the world's most powerful lasers will be doubled or even doubled. Researchers at the University of Michigan and collaborators from all over the world plan to upgrade the Hercules laser, Of the transmission power from 300 tiles to 500 tiles or even 1000 tiles. (1 tiles = 1,000,000,000,000 / 10 ^ 12 watts)
With more energy-intensive laser energy, researchers can develop desktop-sized, smaller particle-accelerated devices, create high-energy particle beams or X-rays for medical and national security, and explore puzzles that have not yet been answered in astrophysics and quantum mechanics The
According to the University of Michigan, the energy of Hercules lasers comes from five embedded laser pumps. In order to upgrade the Hercules, the researchers will replace three of these customized laser pumps into commercial laser pumps. Power can reach 1000 tiles, it will once again become one of the most powerful lasers in the United States, it was in 2008 won the 'highest intensity laser' Guinness Book of World Records title.
The upgraded Hercules will double or triple the current transmit power, and when the researchers first built Hercules in 2007, the laser built with a commercial laser pump was not able to reach 300 watts of power at that time, so the researchers Had to build their own laser pump.
Now with the ever-increasing demand for business projects, the current commercial laser pump has completely surpassed the custom laser pump used by Hercules. More powerful lasers can be used to build desktop-sized accelerators. Traditional particle accelerators have hundreds of kilometers Long, for example, the European Nuclear Research Council's large Hadron Collider is 27 km.
The laser can accelerate particles, resulting in higher energy particles, such as X-rays, etc. Particle beams and X-rays can be used to determine the presence of nuclear material in port shipments, and they can also be used for radiotherapy in the medical field. High-energy X-rays generated by laser accelerators can also produce advanced X-ray imaging equipment that allows doctors to identify boundaries between different software organizations in the body. Traditional X-rays can only recognize dense substances such as bones.
The researchers say that this approach is also faster and cheaper than traditional NMR scanning, and that, in addition to these applications, more dense auroral energy can be used to explore more astrophysical and quantum mechanics secrets. The University of Michigan's Nuclear Engineering "This upgrade allows us to carry out a wider variety of experiments, which is a very exciting application and it opens up a new door for quantum physics," said Karl Krushelnick, professor of radiology and radiology.
