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Since its introduction in the 1977 film "Star Wars," the Death Star has remained one of science fiction's most iconic figures. The image of Alderaan's destruction at the hands of the Death Star's superlaser is burned into the memory of millions of fans.
Scientists and laser experts have maintained that this superbeam could never work due to the properties of lasers—theory says that rather than converging and combining their energy, the beams would just pass through one another.
That was true—until now. A team of researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have added a plasma—a charged mixture of ions and free electrons—to the concept and successfully combined several separate lasers into a superbeam. This work was recently published in Nature Physics, and is a next step in LLNL's 50-year history of leadership in laser research and development.
While this superbeam isn't quite as "super" as the one depicted in science fiction, it stands as an important achievement—for the first time, nine of the National Ignition Facility's (NIF) 192 laser beams were combined to produce a directed pulse of light that was nearly four times the energy of any of the individual beams. Leveraging LLNL's expertise in optics research and development, the team used a Livermore-designed plasma optic to combine the beams and produce this first demonstration of its kind.
Death Star DIYers take note.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by DECbot on Wednesday October 18 2017, @06:45PM (1 child)
There is a perfectly valid use for such technology. Instead of getting 4 beams to precisely strike on the surface of a single target, you can use 9 beams and have them converge in your plasma "lens" and only need to focus one super beam to the target's surface. It makes tasks like exciting individual atoms or destroying entire planets a lot easier.
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(Score: 2) by Absolutely.Geek on Tuesday October 24 2017, @12:17AM
Yep I thought the same thing; though this is inefficient they could increase the energy delivered to the target by a very significant amount; ok so they will need to increase the number of lasers to 1728 to enable max power. But this is a big step.
Sounds like this is only the beginning of some very powerful laser source experiments.
Also as better understanding of the plasma physics comes along the efficiency will increase; currently 4/9, how long before they hit 50%? 80%?
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