Plasma optic combines lasers into superbeam

phys.org

31 points·pwg··10 comments

9 beams combined into a single beam with energy 4 times of a single beam.

This should be good for their fusion efforts. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/high-powered-lase...

"Plasma is generally bad for lasers"

The plasma is the best part. With plasma you can print current carrying channels into mid-air, with plasma you can transfer electric charges on them. With plasma your mid-air printed coil can put a force on things.

I assumed (not a laser expert) that the plasma that forms out of the gain media is what is problematic with a typical solid state laser, while in this case, the plasma is the medium.

The plasma at the end of the laser path is usually the best part. Even then, things like laser-plasma instabilities (LPI) can have devastating consequences.

They go on to mention how it's beneficial in this case too...

Could be useful for nuclear fusion:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion

Well, the National Ignition Facility is a fusion research lab, so that is kind of implied.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility for more.

I'm aware of what the NIF is, I skim read the article so I didn't pick up that they were behind it.

These results come from the National Ignition Facility, the world's biggest ICF experiment.

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