Apollon: France Just Fired the Strongest Laser on Earth

[Halcyon66]

https://dailygalaxy.com/2025/05/apollon-france-just-fired-the-strongest-laser-on-earth/
Regards,

 

[dannydale]

Article links to paper https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.085001 in case you want to get past all the fluffy prose.

 

[UpForce]

It's fascinating technology. I was wondering about them "just firing" Apollon (as I couldn't find a recent press release about some seminal event or even a record broken at the facility from the Polytechnique de Paris), but fortunately @dannydale provided a link that clarified the issue. Apollon's French Wikipedia page states that there are several Extreme Light Infrastructure projects across the EU which should exceed Apollon's intensity "by 2020" so quite clearly that entry is at least half a decade out of date. Anyway, here are links to both an explanatory page about Apollon and ELI for those inclined to, ahem, shine a light on the subject:

https://www.polytechnique.edu/en/news/apollon-power-laser-infrastructure-explained-video
https://www.eli-laser.eu/