Researchers from Macquarie University have discovered a new way to make ultra-pure frequency lasers. The method depends upon diamond that prevents destabilizing and broadening a laser’s frequency problems.
By using diamonds, scientists showed stable single frequency operation. They just used a simple laser cavity design that would normally be highly exposed to destabilization. Particularly, they placed the diamond at the center of a long-standing wave cavity. This arrangement generally considered as a worst-case scenario for encouraging the instabilities that cause the polychromatic behavior to occur.
Mildren, Associate Professor, claimed, “Lasers are usually thought of as being highly monochromatic i.e., of a single frequency. But in most cases, their spectral purity is corrupted by a destabilizing effect referred to as spatial hole burning. This effect causes the laser frequency to chaotically jump between groupings of many closely spaced lines.”
“The problem is avoided in our case by using a light amplifying medium. The medium depends upon stimulated scattering instead of an excited medium that contains energy such as a population inversion,” he explained.
Pure frequency is an important requirement in many laser applications. This requirement made appropriate by the current explosion in interest in gravitational wave astronomy, depends on upon interference of single frequency laser beams that are high power and ultra-stable.
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Although, this novel method is much simpler, robust and offers greater freedoms for laser design.
“Since the light amplifier ‘engine’ works using a fundamentally different principle to most lasers we are familiar with, a completely different range of materials may be used including those with extraordinary properties such as diamond. This promises a method of generating single frequency lasers over a wider choice of wavelengths and with potentially very high power,” he added.