What are super lasers?
High-energy particle accelerators are becoming increasingly expensive and require tunnels increasingly long. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Geneva, Switzerland, is 27 km long and cost 10 billion euros. It is necessary to find more feasible and less expensive means.
Although the quality of the tools has improved, it was not possible to obtain high rates of repetition in time
Up until now, atomic structures were studied through several methods used to produce high-penetration energy impulses, and also with lasers that can enhance the energy content of atomic nuclei. However, although the quality of the tools has improved, it was not possible to obtain high rates of repetition in time.
Superlasers: Fibre lasers
In order to properly research the new physics, scientists try to accelerate electrons and positrons with energies above five Teraelectronvolts (5 TeV), which, with current technology, would require an electricity power of hundreds of megawatts. A group of scientists is now looking into the possibility of combining fiber lasers, conveniently grouped, to shake a plasma and obtain the necessary impulses to the rate of petawatts (1015 watts). But this would still not reach the desired quality and luminosity. From the start of the 21st century, only small-sized plasmas have been obtained.
A solution to the high cost of accelerators
The idea is to build an electron-positron accelerator with certain aligned laser plasma modules to accelerate particles. The final machine would be two kilometers shorter than the current accelerators, and it would probably also be much cheaper. This way it would be possible to have a 1 to 10 TeV device.
However, there are still no lasers with enough capacity to produce thousands or millions of impulses per second, which means it will be necessary to launch a research and development programme to achieve ultra-short impulses with enormous potency.
To adjust and manage 30,000 fiber lasers it will be necessary to have a future research program
New advances for the future
A team of physicists at the University of Southampton, in the United Kingdom, has formed the International Coherent Amplification Network (ICAN). This Network has completed a group of 64 fiber lasers in an 8 x 8 lattice so that their beams emerged in parallel. To adjust and manage 30,000 fiber lasers it will be necessary to have a future research program. Another proposal is based on the functioning of a Higgs boson producing machine through the coupling of photons produced by ICAN lasers with electron beams inside the tunnel of the now de-activated Telvatron at the Fermi Laboratory. This site could produce 10,000 bosons every year, which significantly multiplies the quantity produced by the LHC.
