Professor Jong-Min LEE’s team at GISTSucceeds in developing ultra-powerful femtosecond lasers having the world’s highest output

 

-Introduced in the September edition of the prominent academic optics and laser journal “Optics Letters” 

 

  Picture of “Ultrashort Quantum Beam Facility ”, the Korea’s one and only petawatt laser research center

 

□ A Korean research team achieved the world’s highest output record using titanium sapphire laser, beating out world’s top researchers in USA, Europe and Japan in the competition to develop super-power lasers. The research results will be introduced on September 15, 2010, in “Optics Letters” the world’s top optics and laser journal.  

 

The research team led by professor Jong-Min LEE in the Advanced Photonics Research Institute(Director: In Won LEE) at Gwangju Institute of Science & Technology(GIST, president: Jungho SONU) succeeded in developing ultra-powerful femto lasers having the world’s highest output.

 

Professor LEE’s team announced that it succeeded in developing ultrar-powerful femto lasers having the world’s highest output as it carried out the “Project to install and operate research facilities for ultrashort quantum beam” since 2003 under the support of the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, and obtained a pulse width of 30 femtosecond(1/1000 trillion min) and more than 30J(Jule) pulse per energy from a titanium sapphire(Ti: sapphire) laser system which adopts the CPA(Chirped Pulse Amplification) technology, thereby as a result achieving a peak power of more than 1 petawatt(1000 trillion watt).  

 

※ Peak Power= Energy/pulse width per pulse 

 

USA and Europe are currently developing femtosecond petawatt lasers, and Japan has lasers having 0.87 petawatt output(870 trillion watt).

 

□ If we use various second light sources generated by inciding femtosecond ultra power lasers into an object, we will be able to observe the phenomena of the microscopic world which is so small and speedy that we could not see with bare eyes. 

 

-A femtosecond ultra powerful laser generates photons, electrons, protons and ions having great energies by mutually reacting with objects for a femtosecond. Since these 2 dimensional line sources(2차선원) have a time width(time) of femtosecond and a wavelength(space) of less than a nanometer, these can be used in breaking down a ultrahigh speed phenomenon which occurs in a matter into femtoseconds and nanometers and then photographing them. With such levels of spacetime resolution, we can return the various changes and structures of a material into movements of electrons and protons/ions, the smallest unit of a material and understand the material better. 

 

□ Commercializing this scientific technology is expected to bring about an innovation in the science and technology field, and if we utilize the ultra-powerful lasers as a national user research facility, it is expected to contribute greatly to the development of relevant fields such as generation and acceleration of particles which constitute the base of physics, such as atoms, electrons, antiparticles, and quarks, astro-physics, nuclear-physics and big science. 

 

□ In the past, a space as big as an American football ground was needed to obtain a laser output of more than 1000 trillion watt, but the femtosecond ultra-powerful laser developed by professor LEE’s team is a next generation laser system that has such a short pulse width that it is possible to generate petawatt output in a space as small as an indoor gym. 

 

In particular, experts say that the field of producing ultra-powerful lasers using titanium sapphire lasers and the femtoscience field using such lasers are strong candidates for the next nobel prize. 

 

□ At the Advanced Photonics Research Institute, Professor LEE is leading the “ Ultrashort Quantum Beam Facility ” project, which is the one and only petawatt laser research facility in Korea. Already back in 2006, he had succeeded in generating proton beams and X-ray lasers using lasers for the first time in Korea.  

 

Once the Ultrashort Quantum Beam Facility is completed, professor LEE is planning to open the whole research facilities completely to all researchers from home and abroad and develop the facility so that it can become the center in developing femto science and technology. 

 

□ Professor Jon-Min LEE said “by utilizing the femtosecond ultra-powerful laser that we developed, we will continue to make more effort to develop and commercialize micro electron accelerators, micro protons and ion accelerators for medical use, high resolution X-ray laser microscopes for medical and scientific use, and X-ray laser and X-ray Free Electron Laser(FEL)”.