What if I like magenta? Or brown?
Can I interest you in indigo or violet? Or a nice orange?
Genuine q: how close can you get to magenta with the rainbow?
NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers
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Re: NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers
#12Yes but can it do any color a mantis shrimp would like?
Re: NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers
#13But can it produce magenta?
Magenta is the Doom of colour lasers by the look of it.
Re: NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers
#14Is there a single person here interested in photonic computing that wants to explain to the class if there's any "there" there?
There is there there...
The substance is they've created a way to fabricate a device that can make the optical frequencies they wish. That is useful: it means a designer isn't limited to frequencies that are economic to generate with existing techniques, which is a constraint that lasers currently struggle with: low cost, compact, efficient laser sources (the kind that fit on a chip, and are fabricated by cost effective processes,) only exist for a limited number of frequencies.
The story is typical tech journalism pabulum, but the underlying paper does discuss efficiency. It's about what you'd expect: 35 mW -> 6 mW @ 485 nm, for example.
An obvious use case is multimode fiber communication: perhaps this makes it possible to use more frequencies for greater bandwidth and/or make the devices cheaper/smaller/more efficient. But there are other, more exotic things one might do when some optical frequency that was previously uneconomic becomes feasible to use at scale.
Re: NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can I interest you in indigo or violet? Or a nice orange?
Genuine q: how close can you get to magenta with the rainbow?
What we call "magenta" is the sensation of both red and blue color-sensitive cells in the eye being excited at the same time. There's no single wavelength that produces this effect (unlike e.g. yellow). The closes you can get is violet, which looks faint to the eye.
A rainbow gives you both red and blue; mute everything else, and you'll get magenta. That's what magenta pigments do when illuminated by white light (which is a rainbow scrambled).
Re: NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers
#16can they do microwave? if you do the exact right color you can make certain things melt very precisely.
Re: NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers
#17Is there a single person here interested in photonic computing that wants to explain to the class if there's any "there" there?
There is there there... The substance is they've created a way to fabricate a device that can make the optical frequencies they wish. That is useful: it means a designer isn't limited to frequencies that are economic to generate with existing techniques, which is a constraint that lasers currently struggle with: low cost, compact, efficient laser sources (the kind that fit on a chip, and are fabricated by cost effect…
I wonder if this could also work for (e)uv
Re: NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can I interest you in indigo or violet? Or a nice orange?
Genuine q: how close can you get to magenta with the rainbow?
Not very! This is on the "line of purples".
Here's a nice visualization of color perception (there are more modern ones, but we used the 1931 color space when I was working in the field). The horseshoe shape on the outside is the single wavelength colors.
Re: NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers
#19Is there a single person here interested in photonic computing that wants to explain to the class if there's any "there" there?
Depends on the cost. We already have variable wavelength lasers. We have had them for years. They are currently expensive, large, and not the easiest things to control electronically.
I have an application in mind for this technology outside of photonic computing. Again, it depends entirely on price, tunability, bandwidth of the profile, etc. My understanding of the photocomputing field is limited but I never thought the major issues were wavelength related? Maybe someone can educate me.
If anyone wants to send me one of these I would be pumped.
Re: NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers
#20Is there a single person here interested in photonic computing that wants to explain to the class if there's any "there" there?
I think it's more relevant for quantum computing. The ions we choose for ion trap quantum computers are in part due to what wavelengths are excitable by modified telecom lasers, because they're the wavelengths that are easiest to produce and where the most research/stability/miniaturization has been focused. If the laser wavelength is configurable to this degree then it no longer becomes a constraint, and maybe you can choose single ions with different characteristics.