According to foreign media reports, physicists from the national institute of standard technology (NIST) and the university of Colorado, by using ordinary electronic equipment, to create a photoelectric laser pointer that is 100 times faster than conventional ultra-fast laser pulses. The development could extend the benefits of ultrafast laser science to new applications such as real-time biomaterials imaging.
The technology to make photoelectric lasers has been around for more than 50 years. But until now, researchers have been unable to create ultrafast pulses by converting light electronically, while eliminating electronic noise or interference. Given this background, scientists from the national institute of standards and technology in the United States have developed a filtering method to reduce heat-induced interference that would otherwise disrupt the consistency of electron synthesis light. The electronic signals become stable as they bounce back and forth in the aluminum cavity, and then they are filtered so that a fixed light wave at the strongest frequency blocks or filters out signals at other frequencies.
Conventional ultra-fast light sources are optical frequency combs, which are usually generated by complex mode-locked lasers that pulse light waves of multiple overlapping frequencies, creating links between optical and microwave frequencies. The interoperation of optical and microwave signals has facilitated the development of communication, timing and quantum sensing systems. By contrast, NIST’s new optoelectronic lasers use microwave electron vibrations on continuum-wave lasers running at optical frequencies, effectively carving pulses into light waves. The new photoelectric laser generates pulses every 100 ps, instead of the usual 10 ns.
“Chemical and biological imaging is a good use case for this type of laser,” said Scott Papp, who led the project. Detection of biological samples by ultrafast pulses can provide imaging and chemical composition information. With our new technology, we can quickly achieve similar imaging. As a result, the currently one minute high intensity imaging could be completed in a much shorter time.”
To create an optoelectronic laser, the NIST researchers start with an infrared continuous wave laser and generate pulses through a cavity stable oscillator, ensuring that all pulses are the same. The laser generates pulses of light at the rate of microwaves, and each pulse then passes through the microchip waveguide structure to produce more color in the comb. The laser is built with commercial telecommunication and microwave components, so the whole system is very reliable. Its reliability and accuracy make the comb ideal for long-term measurements in optical clock networks, communications, or sensor systems that require faster data acquisition than currently available.