Author: Emily Conover / Source: Science News
Blazingly fast lasers have just leveled up.
Ultrafast lasers emit short, rapid-fire bursts of light, with each pulse typically lasting tens of millionths of a billionth of a second. A new laser pulses 30 billion times a second — about 100 times as fast as most ultrafast lasers, researchers report in the Sept. 28 Science.
The speed boost was thanks to a new technique for making ultrafast lasers. Typically, researchers use a technique called mode locking, in which light bounces back and forth in a mirrored cavity in such a way that the light waves build on each other to create short flashes. The new method takes a more “brute force” approach, says study coauthor David Carlson, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colo., by essentially carving up a continuous laser…
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