Next Big Future September 5, 2023 The Pentagon has been spending about $1 billion per year researching directed energy weapons like lasers and microwave weapons for decades. They have bought a few demonstration systems for Navy ships and mounted on trucks. In July 2023 Lockheed Martin announced they will scale its laser technology to a new benchmark: a 500 kW-class laser. This is the second phase of the High Energy Laser Scaling Initiative. After spending tens of billions on combat laser research over the past few decades, they are finally seeing some real progress to usable combat lasers in the […]
Tag Archives: Laser technology
Milestone for laser technology
Science Daily December 5, 2022 To make free-electron lasers (FELs) smaller and more cost-effective, an international team of researchers (Israel, Japan, Germany, France, USA – UT Austin) has demonstrated seeded FEL lasing in the ultraviolet regime based on laser-plasma accelerator-driven free-electron laser in a seeded configuration, where control over the radiation wavelength was accomplished. The appearance of interference fringes, resulting from the interaction between the phase-locked emitted radiation and the seed, confirmed longitudinal coherence. Based on their work the researchers anticipate a navigable pathway to extreme-ultraviolet wavelengths, paving the way towards smaller-scale free-electron lasers, unique tools for a multitude of […]