Colin Danson

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On the Cover of HPL: Petawatt and exawatt class lasers worldwide

An international team of scientific experts has gathered to examine the current status of ultra-high-powered lasers around the world and look to the future to predict what the next generation of laser systems will offer. The culmination of their work is a major review paper ‘Petawatt and Exawatt Class Lasers Worldwide’, which looks at the historical context of this technology, its current and future use, and direction.

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Nobel Prize in Physics 2018 awarded for pioneering laser work

(note: this has been adapted from the Nobel Prize committees press release) The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2018“for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics” with one half to Arthur Ashkin, Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, USA “for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems” and the other half jointly to Gérard Mourou, École Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France & University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA and Donna Strickland, University of Waterloo, Canada “for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses”.

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