Read on ScienceNews.org – A new ultrafast laser emits pulses of light 30 billion times a second
The devices pulsate at a higher rate than ever before, thanks to a novel technique
BY EMILY CONOVER – 7:00AM, OCTOBER 5, 2018
Faster pulses could also speed up certain kinds of imaging of biological tissues. And the laser could be useful for telecommunications, says physicist and electrical engineer Andrew Weiner of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., who called the work a “tour de force.” Each color of light could carry its own stream of information in a fiber-optic cable.
The researchers “have achieved this amazing level of performance,” says physicist Victor Torres-Company of Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. “It’s up to us to think and dream what we could do with this light source.”
FINE-TOOTH COMB An ultrafast laser pulsates faster than any of its predecessors. The new device isolates light of particular frequencies (peaks in blue curves) to create a frequency comb made up of discrete colors of light (vertical bands). Scientists had to eliminate jitter in their experiment to make the comb (progression left to right).
