From: Eugene Leitl (Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Wed May 23 2001 - 05:17:14 MDT
We've talked about using microsingularities as catalysts for
matter->energy conversions before. One of the suggestions to generate them
was to focus giant energy densities on small regions of spacetime (a
sphere of giant-energy ultrashort pulse lasers with ultraprecise alignment
and synchronization), but probably it would be thwarted by coupling to
Dirac's sea, thus making vacuum opaque due to devirtualization of virtual
pairs and preventing us from achieving supercritical fluxes. Plus
targeting and synchronizing a very large assembly spread over lightsecond
to lightminute distances looks not exactly trivial.
Now this time machine wannabee people say photons warp space more if
slowed. What happen if a more down to earth spherical arrangement of, say,
GJoule lasers would synchronously fire on a Bose-Einstein condensate
target? If the targeting is right, we can get very short, very intense
pulses in optical (an in principle up to xRay) range which hit the target
at the same time -- and slowed down to few m/s.
Of course this will cook the condensate, so that it will lose its magic
fairy dust spread, but how soon? Any physicists around?
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