Magnetic fields so strong that they are typically only observed in astrophysical jets and highly magnetized neutron stars could be created in the laboratory, say physicists at the University of Osaka, Japan. Their proposed approach relies on directing extremely short, intense laser pulses into a hollow tube housing sawtooth-like inner blades. The fields created in this improved version of the established “microtube implosion” technique could be used to imitate effects that occur in various high-energy-density processes, including non-linear quantum phenomena and laser fusion as well as astrophysical systems.
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