List of petawatt lasers
This page contains a list of petawatt-level lasers in operation, under construction, or proposed. The list is compiled from existing academic reviews.[1][2]
A petawatt laser is typically defined as a laser system whose pulse energy divided by its pulse duration reaches an order of magnitude of 1015 W, or 1 petawatt. These high-power laser pulses are capable of driving a strong electromagnetic field, giving rise to a number of novel applications. For instance, focusing large numbers of petawatt level lasers on a target containing deuterium and tritium creates enough energy density to drive inertial confinement fusion. Another potential application is using strong electric fields from petawatt laser pulses to drive steep density gradient structures in a plasma, which then creates field gradients capable of accelerating particles in a much shorter distance than linac; such concept is known as laser wakefield acceleration.
Generation of a petawatt laser pulse requires the pulse duration to be extremely short: to reach 1 petawatt of power, a 1 joule laser pulse will require a duration of <1 fs (< 10−15 seconds). All petawatt systems use the technique of chirped pulse amplification, which amplifies chirped, temporally stretched laser pulses before compressing them into femtosecond, ultra-high intensity pulses. For laser systems with large pulse energies, Nd:glass is typically used as a gain medium, as they can be grown into very large crystals. For laser pulses with duration near the femtosecond range, Ti:Sapphire is widely used to take advantage of its wide lasing spectrum; only such lasers can be compressed into ultrashort pulses, due to Fourier relations between the temporal and spectral widths of the pulse signal.
List
[edit]| Facility | Institution | Location | Classification | Pulse energy (J) |
Pulse duration (fs) |
Peak power (PW) |
Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nova | Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory |  United States
|
Nd:glass | 660 | 440 | 1.5 | Decommissioned |
| NIF-ARC | Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory | United States
|
Nd:glass | 400–1700 | 1300–38 000 | 1.5 | Operation |
| Texas Petawatt Laser[3][4] | University of Texas, Austin | United States
|
Nd:glass | 186 | 167 | 1.1 | Operation |
| Z-PW | Sandia National Laboratories | United States
|
Nd:glass | 500 | 500 | 1 | Operation |
| ZEUS | University of Michigan | United States
|
Nd:glass | 75 | 25 | 3 | Commission |
| 12.5 | 25 | 0.5 | |||||
| SG-II-PW[5] | Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, The Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIOM) |
 China
|
Nd:glass | 1000 | 1000 | 1 | Operation |
| Vulcan | Rutherford Appleton Laboratory |  United Kingdom
|
Nd:glass | 500 | 500 | 1 | Operation |
| Orion | Atomic Weapons Establishment | United Kingdom
|
Nd:glass | 500 | 500 | 1 | Operation |
| PHELIX | GSI Helmholtz |  Germany
|
Nd:glass | 250 | 400 | 0.625 | Operation |
| LMJ-PETAL | CEA Cesta |  France
|
Nd:glass | 850 | 700 | 1.15 | Operation |
| GEKKO XII-LFEX | Osaka University |  Japan
|
Nd:glass | 3000 | 1500 | 2 | Operation |
| ELI-B L4 | Extreme Light Infrastructure |  Czech Republic
|
Nd:glass | 1500 | 150 | 10 | Construction |
| ELI-NP | Extreme Light Infrastructure |  Romania
|
Ti:sapphire | 242 | 22.3 | 10.9 | Operation |
| ELI-B L2 | Extreme Light Infrastructure | Czech Republic
|
Ti:sapphire | 20 | 20 | 1 | Operation |
| ELI-B L3 HAPLS | Extreme Light Infrastructure Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory |
Czech Republic
|
Ti:sapphire | 30 | 30 | 1 at 10 Hz | Operation |
| SULF | SIOM ShanghaiTech University |
China
|
Ti:sapphire | 216 | 21 | 10.3 | Operation |
| XL-III | Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Science | China
|
Ti:sapphire | 32 | 28 | 1.16 | Operation |
| CAEP-PW[6] | China Academy of Engineering Physics | China
|
Ti:sapphire | 91.1 | 18.6 | 4.9 | Operation |
| SG-II-5 PW[7] | SIOM | China
|
Ti:sapphire | 37 | 21 | 1.76 | Operation |
| SEL-100 PW[8] | Shanghai High Repetition Rate XEFL and Extreme Light Facility | China
|
Ti:sapphire | 1500 | 15 | 100 | Construction |
| Gwangju-PW | Centre for Relativistic Laser Science |  South Korea
|
Ti:sapphire | 83 | 19.4 | 4.2 | Operation |
| BELLA | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory | United States
|
Ti:sapphire | 40 | 30 | 1.3 | Operation |
| ALEPH | Colorado State University | United States
|
Ti:sapphire | 26 | 30 | 0.87 at 3.3 Hz | Operation |
| DIOCLES | University of Nebraska-Lincoln | United States
|
Ti:sapphire | 20 | 30 | 0.7 | Operation |
| NSF OPAL | Laboratory for Laser Energetics, University of Rochester | United States
|
Ti:sapphire | 25 | Planned | ||
| J-KAREN | National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology | Japan
|
Ti:sapphire | 28/30 | 33/30 | 0.85/1 | Operation |
| Gemini | Rutherford Appleton Laboratory | United Kingdom
|
Ti:sapphire | 15 | 30 | 0.5 | Operation |
| VEGA-3 | University of Salamanca |  Spain
|
Ti:sapphire | 30 | 30 | 1 at 1 Hz | Operation |
| DRACO | Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf | Germany
|
Ti:sapphire | 30 | 30 | 1 | Operation |
| ATLAS | Technical University of Munich Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich |
Germany
|
Ti:sapphire | 60 | 25 | 2.4 | Construction |
| Apollon | CNRS École polytechnique |
France
|
Ti:sapphire | 150 | 15 | 10 | Construction |
| CETAL | INFLPR | Romania
|
Ti:sapphire | 25 | 25 | 1 | Operation |
| RRCAT | Raja Ramana Centre for Advanced Technology |  India
|
Ti:sapphire | 25 | 25 | 1 at 0.1Hz | Operation |
| PEARL | Institute of Applied Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences |  Russia
|
Ti:sapphire | 18 | 55–67 (10)a) [clarification needed] |
0.25–0.3 (1.5)a) [clarification needed] |
Operation |
| TRISHUL[9] | Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Hyderabad | India
|
Ti:sapphire | 25 | 25 | 1 at 1Hz | Construction |
References
[edit]- ^ Li, Zhaoyang; Leng, Yuxin; Li, Ruxin (2022). "Further Development of the Short-Pulse Petawatt Laser: Trends, Technologies, and Bottlenecks". Laser & Photonics Reviews. 17 (3). doi:10.1002/lpor.202100705.
- ^ Danson, Colin N.; et al. (2019). "Petawatt and exawatt class lasers worldwide". High Power Laser Science and Engineering. 7: e54. Bibcode:2019HPLSE...7E..54D. doi:10.1017/hpl.2019.36.
- ^ Gaul, Erhard W.; et al. (2010). "Demonstration of a 1.1 petawatt laser based on a hybrid optical parametric chirped pulse amplification/mixed Nd:glass amplifier". Applied Optics. 49 (9): 1676–1681. Bibcode:2010ApOpt..49.1676G. doi:10.1364/AO.49.001676. PMID 20300167.
- ^ "Texas Petawatt Laser". The University of Texas at Austin. Retrieved 5 February 2025.
- ^ Xu, Guang; Wang, Tao; Li, Zhaoyang; Dai, Yaping; Lin, Zunqi; Gu, Yuan; Zhu, Jianqiang (2008). "1 kJ Petawatt Laser System for SG-II-U Program". The Review of Laser Engineering. 36: 1172–1175. doi:10.2184/lsj.36.1172.
- ^ Zeng, Xiaoming; et al. (2017). "Multi-petawatt laser facility fully based on optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification". Optics Letters. 42 (10): 2014–2017. Bibcode:2017OptL...42.2014Z. doi:10.1364/OL.42.002014. PMID 28504737.
- ^ Zhu, Jianqiang; et al. (2018). "Analysis and construction status of SG-II 5PW laser facility". High Power Laser Science and Engineering. 6: e29. Bibcode:2018HPLSE...6E..29Z. doi:10.1017/hpl.2018.23.
- ^ Xu, Dirui; Shen, Baifei; Xu, Jiancai; Liang, Zhenfeng (2020). "XFEL beamline design for vacuum birefringence experiment". Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A. 982: 164553. Bibcode:2020NIMPA.98264553X. doi:10.1016/j.nima.2020.164553.
- ^ "The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) has selected Amplitude to provide the first 1PW, 1Hz laser system in India". Amplitude. Retrieved 2025-07-03.