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Apparently the semiconductor industry already has lasers that are 20x more efficient than what was used in this experiment.
by teach 4y ago
Apparently the semiconductor industry already has lasers that are 20x more efficient than what was used in this experiment.
- isoprophlex 4y agoInteresting, thanks! So the low laser efficiency isn't really important in interpreting the importance of this news.
- adrian_b 4y agoThe semiconductor lasers cannot produce pulses short enough for such applications. They can be used only as the pumping sources for the solid-state lasers or fiber lasers that can produce the short pulses. So the efficiencies of two lasers must be multiplied. I doubt that there is any chance to obtain an electrical to light conversion efficiency above 10%. So the energy generated by the fusion reaction should be much greater than 10 times the light energy, to be able to produce excess energy, even with lasers 10 times more efficient than now.
- dark-star 4y agoEven if semiconductor lasers could put out the power required (they can't...), a 20x improvement would still mean the efficiency is only around 20%, so you'd still be putting in 10 MJ to get out 2 MJ... Yes, it's better, but the argument still holds