Apollon: France Just Fired the Strongest Laser on Earth

[Halcyon66]

Apollon: France Just Fired the Strongest Laser on Earth — So Intense It Mimics the Birth of the Universe

In a quiet lab near Paris, scientists are firing the most powerful laser ever built. A new U.S. breakthrough tries to catch up — but falls far short.

dailygalaxy.com

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across the EU which should exceed Apollon's intensity "by 2020" so quite clearly that entry is at least half a decade out of date.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:

Apollon power laser infrastructure explained in video - École polytechnique

www.polytechnique.edu

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