The research center contains the world's most powerful laser beam

The laser machine located at Thales's research center can reach a maximum power of 10 petawatts in an extremely short time .

In the control room of a research center in Romania , engineer Antonia Toma activates the world's most powerful laser beam , promising to revolutionize every field from medicine to space. The laser machine at the center near the Romanian capital Bucharest is operated by the French company Thales, using a Nobel Prize-winning invention, AFP reported on March 31. Researchers Gerard Mourou (France) and Donna Strickland (Canada) won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics for harnessing the power of lasers to create highly precise equipment for eye surgery and industrial applications.

The research center contains the world's most powerful laser machine. (Photo: AFP).

In the center, in front of a wall filled with screens displaying light beams, Toma checked a series of indicators before starting the countdown. On the other side of the glass, long rows of red and black boxes contain two laser systems. The scale of operations at the research center is very large. The system can reach a maximum power of 10 petawatts (one petawatt is equal to 10 to the power of 15 watts) in an ultra-short time of femtoseconds (one femtosecond is one millionth of a billionth of a second). Engineers had to carefully install 450 tons of equipment to achieve this exceptional performance, according to Franck Leibreich, director of laser solutions management at Thales.

Mourou admitted he was emotional after the extraordinary journey from the US, where he worked for 30 years, to make the project a reality in Europe. The project emerged in the 2000s from the larger ELI Infrastructure project of the European Union.

The high-tech building, which houses the research center, cost $350 million to build, mostly from the European Union. Thames said this is the largest investment in scientific research in Romania. Meanwhile, countries including France, China and the US are pushing their own projects to produce even more powerful laser machines.

Scientists are always looking for ways to create more powerful laser machines. However, in the mid-1980s, they ran into a barrier, making it impossible to increase power without affecting the amplification of the light beam. That's when Mourou and Strickland, his student at the time, invented a technique called Chirped-Pulse Amplification (CPA) , which increased power and amplified safety.

The technique works by stretching an ultrashort laser pulse, amplifying it and compressing it again, creating the shortest and most powerful laser pulse in the world. CPA has already been applied in eye surgery, but could pave the way for scientists to continue expanding the boundaries of laser technology. "We will use this super powerful pulse to produce more compact particle accelerators at even cheaper prices" to destroy cancer cells, Mourou said.

Other potential applications include treating radioactive waste by reducing the duration of radioactive activity or cleaning up trash accumulated in space. For Mourou, the past century belonged to electrons, and the 21st century is the era of lasers.