Berkeley Lab

BELLA Laser achieves world record power at one pulse per second

The BELLA laser bay at a late stage of construction, "front end" in foreground.

The BELLA laser bay at a late stage of construction, “front end” in foreground.

July 20, 2012—On this night the BELLA laser system delivered a petawatt of power in a pulse just 40 femtoseconds long at a pulse rate of one hertz—one pulse every second. A petawatt is 1015 watts, a quadrillion watts, and a femtosecond is 10-15 second, a quadrillionth of a second. No other laser system has achieved this peak power at this rapid pulse rate. For further information, see the LBNL press release and this Scientific American news item.