World record claimed for laser

Shanghai’s super laser machine has given a demonstration of ultra intense, ultra fast lasers that can deliver peak power of 10.3 petawatts, the city government announced yesterday.

According to the government, this reading is the highest so far in the world.

The machine Shanghai Superintense-Ultrafast Lasers Facility (SULF) had already recorded a breakthrough in August last year when the peak power exceeded 5 petawatts, making it then the world’s most powerful pulse laser.

The latest result was released on Tuesday by a combined lab, supplied by Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (SIOM) and ShanghaiTech University. The SULF machine is scheduled to be fully completed in late 2018.

One petawatt equals 1 quadrillion watts. Experts said the new progress in laser technology can be projected to research covering fields such as astrophysics, nuclear medicine, nuclear physics and material science.

The super intense and ultra fast laser also makes it possible to create extreme environments — which only exist inside a star or at the edge of a black hole — within a laboratory.