All articles tagged with #laser beams
Researchers from Oxford and Lisbon have used advanced simulations to recreate and study extreme quantum vacuum effects, specifically vacuum four-wave mixing, using intense laser beams. This work provides crucial insights for future experiments with ultra-powerful lasers, potentially confirming quantum effects like photon-photon scattering and aiding the search for dark matter candidates.
Physicists have developed a method to manipulate laser beams in order to utilize photons for quantum computing, creating a quantum light source that encodes information in photons rather than physical qubits, such as electrons. This development opens up new possibilities for quantum calculations and represents a significant advancement in the field of quantum computing.
NASA's Artemis II mission will use the Orion Optical Communications System (O2O) to transmit live, 4K ultra-high-definition video back to Earth from the Moon. The system will also support communication of images, voice, control channels, and enhanced science data. The O2O system includes an optical module, a modem, and a control system. Optical communication solutions can provide 10 to 100 times the bandwidth of radio frequency systems, and other improvements may include increased link distances, higher efficiency, reduced interference, improved security, and reductions in size and weight.
Researchers at the University of Maryland have demonstrated a continuously operating optical fiber made of thin air using auxiliary ultrashort laser pulses to sculpt fiber optic waveguides in the air itself. The air waveguide can be arbitrarily "unspooled" and directed at the speed of light in any direction, making it an exceptional candidate for directed energy. The waveguide method is straightforwardly scalable to 1 kilometer and longer, and the air waveguide is continuously maintained by heating and deepening the waveguide faster than the surrounding air can cool it, making continuous air waveguiding over kilometer and longer ranges easily achievable with existing laser technology and modest power levels.
Motion-detecting cameras outside a museum in Japan captured green laser beams in the sky, which were later identified as being emitted by NASA's ICESat-2 satellite. The satellite uses lasers and a lidar sensor to measure ice sheet elevation, sea ice thickness, and land topography on Earth. The laser beams are typically difficult to spot from Earth, but on this occasion, the clouds scattered the laser light, making it visible to the museum's cameras. This is the first time the satellite's laser beams have been caught on camera.
A Japanese astronomer, Daichi Fujii, captured footage of NASA's ICESat-2 satellite firing laser beams at Earth using a homemade motion detection camera. The satellite uses lidar to measure the height of Earth's ice, water, and land surfaces from space. The laser instrument fires 10,000 times a second, sending six beams to Earth to measure how long it takes individual photons to bounce off the surfaces and come back to the satellite. The footage marks the first time that the ICESat-2 team has ever seen footage of the satellite's green laser beams from Earth.