From the Article

>For the first time, scientists were successful at driving at a thousand shots per second a so-called plasma mirror in the relativistic regime, i.e. with a laser field so strong that hurls the plasma electrons back and forth at nearly the speed of light. The feat was accomplished at the LOA (Laboratoire d’Optique Appliquée) in France.
>
>When an intense laser pulse ionizes the surface of a solid target, it creates plasma so dense that it is impenetrable to the laser, even if the target was initially transparent. The laser now gets reflected off this “plasma mirror.” In the relativistic regime, the mirror surface no longer just sits stills but is driven to oscillate so fast that, through a process called relativistic surface high-harmonic generation (SHHG), it temporally compresses the laser’s electromagnetic field cycles. This concentrates the laser energy further in time and makes plasma mirrors a promising path for the generation of ever more intense and shorter laser pulses.

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305:

From the Article

>For the first time, scientists were successful at driving at a thousand shots per second a so-called plasma mirror in the relativistic regime, i.e. with a laser field so strong that hurls the plasma electrons back and forth at nearly the speed of light. The feat was accomplished at the LOA (Laboratoire d’Optique Appliquée) in France.
>
>When an intense laser pulse ionizes the surface of a solid target, it creates plasma so dense that it is impenetrable to the laser, even if the target was initially transparent. The laser now gets reflected off this “plasma mirror.” In the relativistic regime, the mirror surface no longer just sits stills but is driven to oscillate so fast that, through a process called relativistic surface high-harmonic generation (SHHG), it temporally compresses the laser’s electromagnetic field cycles. This concentrates the laser energy further in time and makes plasma mirrors a promising path for the generation of ever more intense and shorter laser pulses.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/zykw6e/relativistic_plasma_mirror_driven_at_a/j26e99c/

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Airline pilots and middle school bus drivers are going to hate this.

Sooooo...... Pong at the speed of light?

Someone eli5 the application for this? It’s cool but I don’t understand it enough to see where it could applied to.

Well whoop-de-doo, but what does it all mean, Basil?

Seems applicable to EUV light generation, which is now done by vaporizing lead droplets via laser and focusing the created light. This extreme ultraviolet light is used in the lithography of the latest semiconductors.

So this is what sci-fi writers have been talking about when their characters “raise the shields” in their spacecrafts (Star Trek/Star Wars etc)

Sounds like a light capacitor. Charge it up with dim light for a long time, discharge the brighter, shorter laser beam

How small are these systems? Can the plasma be held in place for a meaningful period of time? This screams weaponry. It would have ammo - solid ablation targets. Possibly a charge time. Probably tunable to some degree. High enough power just vapes the clouds - ultimate air defense.

I wonder then if the ablation material could also be used as armor to the same kind of laser?

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