Using air to deflect lasers
Using a novel method, beams of laser light can be deflected using air alone. An invisible grating made only of air is not only immune to damage from the laser light, but it also preserves the original quality of the beam, reports an interdisciplinary.....»»
Tapered fiber is a potential candidate for delivering high-energy, ultrafast lasers with high beam quality
Ultrafast lasers have the advantages of high time resolution, high energy density, broadband spectrum, etc. Ultrafast lasers with high-energy and high peak power have been widely applied in industrial fields and frontier science, such as advanced man.....»»
High-power fiber lasers emerge as a pioneering technology
Optical scientists have found a new way to significantly increase the power of fiber lasers while maintaining their beam quality, making them a future key defense technology against low-cost drones and for use in other applications such as remote sen.....»»
Laser pulse compression by a density gradient plasma for exawatt to zettawatt lasers
A new method of creating laser pulses, more than 1,000 times as powerful as those currently in existence, has been proposed by scientists in the UK and South Korea......»»
Harmful gases could be detected on-the-spot with new way to generate powerful lasers
Scientists led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have developed a novel method to produce intense and ultra-fast lasers that holds promise for making precise devices that can speed up how quickly trace amounts of pollutan.....»»
This is how we could possibly build paved roads on the Moon
Lasers melt a regolith-like material into pavers that could be used for lunar roads. Enlarge (credit: Master/Getty) The Moon is slated to be our next frontier. When Artemis 3 takes off (tentatively) near the end of 2025,.....»»
Room-temperature continuous-wave topological Dirac-vortex microcavity lasers on silicon
With the explosive growth of data traffic, it is highly desired to develop hybrid photonic integrated circuits combining various optical components on a single chip......»»
X-ray lasers: Why does brighter mean darker?
When we illuminate something, we usually expect that the brighter the source we use, the brighter the resulting image will be. This rule also works for ultra-short pulses of laser light—but only up to a certain intensity. The answer to the question.....»»
A physics milestone: Miniature particle accelerator works
Particle accelerators are crucial tools in a wide variety of areas in industry, research and the medical sector. The space these machines require ranges from a few square meters to large research centers. Using lasers to accelerate electrons within a.....»»
NASA just launched the Psyche mission—no one knows what it will find
Psyche is going to a metal world with plasma engines and lasers. It's not sci-fi. Enlarge / A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket rides a column of thrust off its launch pad Friday at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (credit: Trevo.....»»
NASA’s Psyche mission is ready for launch—no one knows what it will find
Psyche will go to a metal world with plasma engines and lasers. It's not sci-fi. Enlarge / NASA's Psyche spacecraft is cocooned inside the payload shroud on top of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann/Ars Techni.....»»
Using air to deflect lasers
Using a novel method, beams of laser light can be deflected using air alone. An invisible grating made only of air is not only immune to damage from the laser light, but it also preserves the original quality of the beam, reports an interdisciplinary.....»»
Intense lasers shine new light on the electron dynamics of liquids
An international team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Hamburg and ETH Zurich has now demonstrated that it is possible to probe electron dynamics in liquids using intense laser fields and.....»»
Making a femtosecond laser out of glass
Is it possible to make a femtosecond laser entirely out of glass? That's the rabbit hole that Yves Bellouard, head of EPFL's Galatea Laboratory, went down after years of spending hours—and hours—aligning femtosecond lasers for lab experiments......»»
Composite 2D materials for fiber lasers show promise for ultrafast optics applications
The formation of dissipative solitons is influenced by several factors, such as spectral filtering effects and Kerr nonlinear effects. This interaction leads to the possibility of mode locking over a wide range of parameters, generating pulses whose.....»»
Using lasers to choose and export single-cell cultures: An efficient upgrade to static droplet array tool
Static droplet array (SDA) is a necessary and integral tool when it comes to high-capacity screening tests, or assays, for identifying and targeting specific cells or analytes (substances whose chemical composition is the target of identification). H.....»»
New scalable, etching-based technique for precise tuning of microdisk lasers
Micro- and nanodisk lasers have recently emerged as promising optical sources and probes for various applications in the fields of nanophotonics and biomedicine. Their ability to achieve lasing at a deterministic wavelength and ultra-narrowband preci.....»»
Brighter comb lasers on a chip mean new applications
Researchers have shown that dissipative Kerr solitons (DKSs) can be used to create chip-based optical frequency combs with enough output power for use in optical atomic clocks and other practical applications. The advance could lead to chip-based ins.....»»
Hawaii wildfires stoke climate denial, conspiracy theories
Climate change-denying social media accounts are exploiting the deadly wildfires in Hawaii to push conspiracy theories that high-energy lasers were used to spark the flames......»»
NASA"s deep space communications to laser boost
Set to launch this fall, NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) project will test how lasers could speed up data transmission far beyond the capacity of current radio frequency systems used in space. Known as a technology demonstration, DSOC.....»»
Cool Crowdfunding: CNC Lathe, Antikythera, and Lasers
We receive so many pitches for crowdfunding projects. They pour into our inbox daily. Since crowdfunding is a bit of a gamble, it is always kind of hard to determine just how to write about these projects, considering that many of them may not ever.....»»