worlds most powerful laser

[flame_minion]

http://www.physorg.com/news155846213.html
this laser system will generate 500 trillion watts of peak power i thought it was a cool article, hope you enjoy
when do you think they will have the handheld version

 

[Grix]

I though the texas petawatt laser was the most powerful?

 

[ElektroFreak]

^ No, the NIF at Lawrence Livermore will be by far the biggest in the world when it is finally fully operational. It will be used to induce fusion in small pellets composed of Tritium and Deuterium. It seems that given the Nuclear Test Ban the only way to study fusion reactions is to induce fusion on a small scale, which takes a ridiculous amount of heat.

 

[Archane]

It's nice to see more commercial applications for high powered laser being made public.

 

[...]

As to the 'biggest' there is the most powerful (average energy), highest energy (most joules), and brightest (highest peak power). This laser despite its paltry .5PW of peak power, it is set to give almost 2MJ of energy (which I am still not entirely sure is an absolute record, but at 266nm that sure is!). One interesting to point out is that since these very large lasers usually cannot fire more than once per day or so, the average power is well under 100w so even the little 1mm by 1cm laser diode bars can put out more power than the million dollar superlasers :