• Physics 16, s8
Synthetic salts which might be liquid at room temperature can be utilized to effectively tune the wavelength of a laser supply.
Brookhaven Nationwide Laboratory
Excessive-energy, short-pulse laser sources exist solely in a restricted variety of colours. Researchers within the Sixties discovered {that a} liquid-filled cell, which had inadvertently been positioned inside a laser’s cavity, shifted the laser’s wavelength. Now a crew of scientists from Brookhaven Nationwide Laboratory (BNL), New York, present that artificial, room-temperature liquid salts may function efficient laser-color-tuning media [1]. The discovering might result in a easy and energy-efficient device for creating lasers with desired colours for medical and scientific purposes.
Within the 1960’s liquid approach, when a photon “hits” a liquid molecule, the photon loses vitality, exiting the medium with much less vitality—and thus a unique shade—than it entered (see Focus: Holey Fibers Shed New Gentle). The BNL crew reasoned {that a} liquid salt might work together with photons in the identical approach whereas providing a excessive density of energy-swapping websites in comparison with both a fuel or a typical liquid. The huge array of obtainable synthetic salts might additionally make it potential to exactly tune the vitality loss brought on by the salt–photon interplay, giving elevated shade management.
The researchers assembled their converter setup from a pulsed inexperienced laser and a 63-cm-long cell crammed with a liquid salt. Passing the laser by means of the cell, they noticed that the sunshine turned orange. The researchers measured a excessive color-conversion effectivity of the photons, which they attribute to the massive interplay cross sections of the salt molecules and to the discount of different types of scattering that may inhibit wavelength conversion. The group is at present designing liquids to show this and different lasers to myriad colours.
Correction (20 January 2023): A earlier model of the textual content inaccurately known as the “liquid salt” a “salt answer.”
–Rachel Berkowitz
Rachel Berkowitz is a Corresponding Editor for Physics Journal based mostly in Vancouver, Canada.
References
- R. Kupfer et al., “Raman wavelength conversion in ionic liquids,” Phys. Rev. Appl. 19, 014052 (2023).