A petawatt is one quadrillion watts.

Physicist Todd Ditmire, who directs the Texas Petawatt project, said the laser is the only operating petawatt laser in the United States.

Ditmire said the laser has a power output more than 2,000 times the strength of all power plants in the United States. The laser is brighter than sunlight on the surface of the sun, but it only lasts for a 10th of a trillionth of a second.

The laser will be used to create and study matter at some of the most extreme conditions in the universe, including gases at temperatures greater than those in the sun and solids at pressures of many billions of atmospheres, researchers said.

The Texas Petawatt Laser was funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration, an agency within the U. S. Department of Energy.