Going For Exawatts: Building the most powerful laser in the world

Ditmire plans to build an exawatt laser with a power equivalent to 1000 petawatts. But such a super-laser is still years away from actual development. In the meantime, Ditmire already has the most powerful laser in the world.
To get a sense of how much power an exawatt contains, compare it to a typical filament light bulb consuming about 100 W of electricity.
However, the laser does achieve the highest peak power an instant at a time. His method is to deliver a modest amount of energy over a period of less than one-trillionth of a second.
The main research uses for the Texas Petawatt Laser, as it is called, is to produce thermonuclear fusion, a process that many engineers would like to harness for the process of making commercial generators of electricity.
Laser devices are valuable since they can concentrate a lot of light energy into a tiny spot and send light beams in very straight lines, making possible things like laser surgery, laser surveying, and laser pointers.