The NSF ZEUS user facility

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Zettawatt Equivalent Ultrashort pulse laser System (ZEUS) is the highest power laser in the United States an operates to perform frontier plasma physics experiments. Housed at the University of Michigan, ZEUS has operated as a hands-on user facility since 2024 offering access through a scientific merit based proposal process. The Ti-Sapphire laser is designed to produce 3 Petawatt (PW) power, sub 25 femtosecond laser pulses that are focused to achieve high-intensities. ZEUS has three target areas, each with a different configuration to offer a variety of possible experiments. Target Area 1 (TA1) is designed to run the Zettawatt equivalence experiments where the laser pulse is split; one pulse is used to accelerate a multi-GeV electron beam through laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) and the second pulse is focused to high-intensities and counter-propoagates to collide with the electron beam. The electric field of the laser as seen by the electrons in their rest frame of reference is equivalent to a Zettawatt power pulse. Strong field quantum electrodynamic (QED) effects, namely non-linear Compton emission and multi-photon Breit-Wheeler pair-production, become significant and are expected to strongly influence the collision dynamics. 2 PW power pulses were achieved in 2025 and have already demonstrated LWFA electron beam energies exceeding 2 GeV. Target Area 2 (TA2) currently runs with up to 0.5 PW power pulses and is designed to achieve high-intensity with excellent intensity contrast using a short-focal length optic and double plasma mirrors to support experiments such as high-harmonic generation or ion acceleration. Target Area 3 (TA3) is designed for LWFA electron beam and betatron x-ray experiments and applications and may run with up to 0.5 PW at a shot per minute or at 200 TW in a 1 Hz burst mode.