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 pulse duration reaches an order of magnitude of 10¹⁵W, 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 duterium 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 1J laser pulse will require a duration of <1fs. All petawatt systems utilizes 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 gain medium due to the capability of growing them into very large crystals. For laser pulses with duration near the femtosecond range, Ti:Sapphire is widely used for their wide lasing spectrum; only such laser can be compressed into ultrashort pulses due to Fourier relations between temporal and spectral width of the pulse signal.

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