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NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers

nist.gov

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Re: NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers

#92
post #21
post #2

Is there a single person here interested in photonic computing that wants to explain to the class if there's any "there" there?

Immediately: * You can pack many more different colors into fiber optic communication lines. Every color carries a few tens of GHz in modulation, but the carrier light is in hundreds of THz; there's a ton of bandwidth not used between readily available colors. * You can likely do interesting molecular chemistry by precisely adjusting laser light to the energy levels of particular bonds / electrons. * Maybe you can pr…

> precisely adjusting laser light to the energy levels of particular bonds / electrons.

However, the article is talking about discrete wavelengths. The device gives you a choice between a bunch of different fixed wavelengths.

It isn't actually tunable to specific frequencies.

Disclaimer: skim read article plus I know very little about the topic

Re: NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers

#94
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The colors most certainly exist without the name. You may have described the fruit as being a weird shade of red, but if someone held up something red and said "so it was this color" you'd say no. Conversely if someone held up something that was actually orange colored, you'd say "yeah it was that color." Similarly, you may have no idea what the name is for the color of a Tangerine, but you know what that color is. Y…

I don't think so. Just becoming fluent in multiple languages can result in the perception of more distinct colors. And those fluent in languages that have additional distinct color names can differentiate subtle differences in the shades of colors that non-speakers cannot even differentiate. Color is less about seeing what is actually out there and more about how our brain interprets colors to create "meaning".

> And those fluent in languages that have additional distinct color names can differentiate subtle differences in the shades of colors that non-speakers cannot even differentiate.

The ability to label more colors is not the ability to perceive more colors. The ability of your cone cells to recognize a difference in color between two samples is unaffected by language.

Re: NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers

#95
post #42
post #24

Everyone talking about magenta and brown, but you can see an illusory color right now even without lasers! https://dynomight.net/colors/ behold, some kind of hyper-turquoise

The whole idea of colour and light frequency is fascinating. These are just frequencies of light, but the subjective experience of them is so much more. And the whole thing of my perception of "red" or what I call "red" could be very different to someone else's subjective perception. But we would both call it red and associate it with the same thing, fire, love, heat, danger etc.

I have thought about this before as well. Like maybe what I see as red you see as purple but since we have always been taught that what we both see is red to both of us it is red.

I am however leaning more to the belief that typically we all see colors the same. But it is one of those things that could never be proven.

Another interesting thought that comes to mind speaking about color perceptions is I recently read an article or post I honestly don't remember where that discussed what do blind people see like do they just see blackness all the time. According to what I read it claimed that people born blind don't actually see a blackout picture they literally just don't perceive anything. I think for most it would be hard to imagine nothingness but I could accept that as a true fact.

Re: NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers

#98
post #74

I'm excited for new displays where instead of RGB primaries that can only show a triangular subset of possible colours, we have dynamic primaries that can combine to show almost any colour.

That sounds cool but how do you encode the image data?

Re: NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A gamma wavelength handheld laser would be cool; "and on this petri dish, we see a dot of cells instantaneously develop cancer"

At high energies I think you could point two at a spot in space and get antimatter where the beams cross (also matter, and then an explosion... see the Breit-Wheeler process). We have a hard enough time building shipping-container sized devices that reflect extreme ultraviolet though... so I think a handheld gamma ray laser is off the table for this century.

But, is there any property of that point in space you could measure by how exactly this occurs?

I.e. could you make some kind of massive confocal telescope using this effect in place of regular multi-photon fluorescence, to measure a 3D volume of space?

Re: NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers

#100
post #24

Everyone talking about magenta and brown, but you can see an illusory color right now even without lasers! https://dynomight.net/colors/ behold, some kind of hyper-turquoise

very interesting, its quite striking, now I'm even more curious how this compares with the lasers.
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