
A newly constructed University of Michigan facility that will be home to the most powerful laser in the United States is hosting its first experiment this week as the nation seeks to become competitive again in the realm of high-power laser facilities.
The experiment will be conducted at ZEUS — short for Zettawatt-Equivalent Ultrashort pulse laser System — by researchers from the University of California, Irvine. They traveled to Ann Arbor as part of their study of extremely intense interactions of light and matter, and how such interactions can be harnessed to shrink particle accelerators.