Abstract
Although lasers are now widely used in many application fields, such as communications, data storage, materials processing, biology, medicine, basic sciences, etc., owing to their excellent features such as spatial and temporal highly coherent behaviors and outstanding beam controllability, there are still a lot of R&D activities on new laser technologies in the world due to the fact that progress in laser technologies is very rapid and new laser technologies are key to the success for the valuable innovations in many fields. This article briefly introduces some trends in the national or multi-national major R&D projects on high power lasers in Europe and USA, and emphasizes the importance of strengthening such a nation-wide R&D activities on high power lasers and their applications also in Japan.
