Producing a rapidly flickering beam equal to the concentrated energy of the sun, the High-Repetition-Rate Advanced Petawatt Laser System (HAPLS) will be 100 times more powerful than Livermore’s Nova Petawatt laser which is pushing the boundaries of fusion research.
Still in development, the key difference between the HAPLS system and its predecessors is its ability to fire laser pulses at a rate of 10 per second, an order of magnitude greater than the world’s most advanced machines.
Delivering some 30 joules of energy to its target matter in a flickering 30 femtoseconds, the HAPLS will help researchers uncover mysteries ranging from cosmology to medicine.
If all goes according to plan the ELI Beamline facility will come online in 2017. Equipped with the HAPLS system, scientists from across the globe will be flocking to the Czech facility in 2018 looking to investigate phenomenon only describable when subjected to the most concentrated energy in the Universe.
Images Courtesy of Lawrence Livermore Lab