The laser didn’t generate 2 quadrillion watts like a power plant would generate electricity, but it delivered that much power in an extremely short pulse, like 20 quadrillionths of a second.
That means the energy it delivered was relatively small (a few hundred joules), but because it was delivered in such a tiny time window, the power (which is energy per unit time) was immense.
The laser did produce power, in the form of intense light and heat, over a very small time period. It converted 2 quadrillion watts of electric energy into a very brief laser pulse.
InverseParallax@lemmy.world 10 months ago
That’s not strictly true.
Chemical lasers absolutely generate their own power, you’re thinking of electro-optically excited lasers.