The ZEUS laser facility at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor has roughly doubled the peak power of any other laser in the United States, with its first official experiment at 2 petawatts (2 quadrillion watts).
At more than 100 times the global electricity power output, this huge power lasts only for the brief duration of its laser pulse — just 25 quintillionths of a second long.
“This milestone marks the beginning of experiments that move into unexplored territory for American high field science,” says Karl Krushelnick, director of the Gérard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Science at U-M, which houses ZEUS…