Even a vacuum will "boil": the most powerful laser in the world will appear in Russia

By 2030 in The most powerful laser will appear in Russia, which will allow to "boil" the vacuum and obtain unique data on the structure of matter and the origin of the Universe. This was reported to TASS by the scientific director of the National Center for Physics and Mathematics (NCPM), Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Sergeev.

"We at the NCFM, as part of the XCELS project (Center for Research of Extreme Light Fields), will create the world's most powerful two-channel laser of 100 petawatts (^10-17 watts) by 2030. This will make it possible to work out critical components and start creating an exawatt 12-channel laser. Its power will be such that it will allow scientists to practically "boil" a vacuum, which no one in the world has been able to do. And we will get new, unique data about the structure of matter, about how the universe appeared, to understand the first moments of its existence," he said.

The founders of the XCELS project are Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Sergeev and foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nobel laureate Gerard Mourou. The project is based on Russian ideas and technologies that have already been tested in practice.

"The country has created real laser systems with a capacity of several HTp, allowing to scale the technology and achieve a record result of 100 HTp and above," Sergeyev added.