Opportunities in Intense Ultrafast Lasers : Reaching for the Brightest Light

The laser has revolutionized many areas of science and society, providing bright and versatile light sources that transform the ways we investigate science and enables trillions of dollars of commerce. Now a second laser revolution is underway with pulsed petawatt-class lasers (1 petawatt: 1 million billion watts) that deliver nearly 100 times the total world's power concentrated into a pulse that lasts less than one-trillionth of a second. Such light sources create unique, extreme laboratory conditions that can accelerate and collide intense beams of elementary particles, drive nuclear reactions, heat matter to conditions found in stars, or even create matter out of the empty vacuum. These powerful lasers came largely from U.S. engineering, and the science and technology opportunities they enable were discussed in several previous National Academies' reports. Based on these advances, the principal research funding agencies in Europe and Asia began in the last decade to invest heavily in new facilities that will employ these high-intensity lasers for fundamental and applied science. No similar programs exist in the United States. Opportunities in Intense Ultrafast Lasers assesses the opportunities and recommends a path forward for possible U.S. investments in this area of science. Table of ContentsFront MatterSummary1 Introduction and Technical Summary2 Stewardship in High-Intensity Laser Science and Technology3 Current and Future Intense Source Technology4 International Landscape5 Science Motivation6 Applications7 Conclusions and RecommendationsAppendixesAppendix A: Technical Background SummariesAppendix B: Supplemental Information on the Underlying Laser TechnologyAppendix C: Supplemental Information on the International CommunityAppendix D: Medical Applications of LasersAppendix E: Petawatt-Class Lasers SummaryAppendix F: Bibliography of Sources