Petawatt and exawatt class lasers worldwide

TLDR

High‑power lasers exceeding 200 TW have been used for ultra‑high‑intensity physics, secondary source generation, and inertial confinement fusion, and recent trends emphasize industrial and multidisciplinary applications requiring higher repetition rates, average powers, and alternative wavelengths such as mid‑IR. This work updates the global status of ultra‑high‑power lasers and examines the technologies and critical issues needed to reach new regimes. The authors review the technologies to be deployed for next‑generation facilities and the challenges that must be addressed. Multi‑petawatt facilities are now operational, with 100 PW lasers already proposed and under construction.

Abstract

In the 2015 review paper ‘Petawatt Class Lasers Worldwide’ a comprehensive overview of the current status of high-power facilities of ${>}200~\text{TW}$ was presented. This was largely based on facility specifications, with some description of their uses, for instance in fundamental ultra-high-intensity interactions, secondary source generation, and inertial confinement fusion (ICF). With the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded to Professors Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou for the development of the technique of chirped pulse amplification (CPA), which made these lasers possible, we celebrate by providing a comprehensive update of the current status of ultra-high-power lasers and demonstrate how the technology has developed. We are now in the era of multi-petawatt facilities coming online, with 100 PW lasers being proposed and even under construction. In addition to this there is a pull towards development of industrial and multi-disciplinary applications, which demands much higher repetition rates, delivering high-average powers with higher efficiencies and the use of alternative wavelengths: mid-IR facilities. So apart from a comprehensive update of the current global status, we want to look at what technologies are to be deployed to get to these new regimes, and some of the critical issues facing their development.