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A comment on Pulsed terawatt lasers have surprising effects when shone through the air (2006). Parent comment

Re:Pulsed terawatt lasers have surprising effects when shone... by spott on Friday May 27, 2016 @03:36PM (#11788366)
You likely couldn't get gravitational lensing, you would probably get pair production first, which would screw with your energy density.
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Re:Pulsed terawatt lasers have surprising effects when shone... by noobermin on Friday May 27, 2016 @04:09PM (#11788595)
Yes, I'd think the Schwinger limit[0] would be reached first, which is currently the dream of most of us in this field. The Irradiance for the Schwinger limit is 10^29 W/cm^2.

By contrast, the planned ELI[1] experiment will have pulse with a intensity of 10^24 W/cm^2. The current state of the art lasers of high peak intensity is ~10^21 W/cm^2 (current record I believe is 10^22 W/cm^2). There are proposals to getting to the Schwinger limit but they are still in the hypothetical stage.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwinger_limit

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_Light_Infrastructure

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