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Soon after the invention of the laser in 1960, it was described as "a solution in search of a problem". However, since that time, the laser has found a place as a useful tool in many military, scientific, medical and industrial applications. |
Soon after the invention of the laser in 1960, it was described as "a solution in search of a problem". However, since that time, the laser has found a place as a useful tool in many scientific, military, medical and industrial applications.ScientificMost types of laser are an inherently pure source of light; they emit near-monochromatic light with a very well defined range of wavelengths. By careful design of the laser components, it is possible to improve the purity of the laser light (measured as the linewidth) beyond that of any other light source. This makes the laser a very useful source for spectroscopy. The high intensity of light that can be achived in a small, well collimated beam can also be used to induce a nonlinear optical effects in a sample, which makes techniques such as Raman spectroscopy possible. Other spectroscopic techniques based on lasers can be used to make extremely sensitive detectors of various molecules, able to measure molecular concentrations in the parts-per-trillion (ppt) level. Some laser systems can produce extremely brief pulses of light - as short as picoseconds or femtoseconds (10-12 - 10-15 seconds). Such pulses can be used to initiate and analyse chemical reactions, a technique known as photochemistry. The short pulses can be used to probe the process of the reaction at a very high temporal resolution, allowing the detection of short-lived intermediate molecules. This method is particularly useful in biochemistry, where it is used to analyse details of protein folding and function. A technique that has had recent sucess is laser cooling. This involves [ion trapping]?, a method where a number of ions are confined in a specially shaped arrangement of electric and magnetic fields. By shining particular wavelengths of laser light at the ions, it is possible to transfer momentum from the ions to the light photons, causing the ions to lose energy and to slow down, thus cooling the ions. If this process is continued, eventually all the ions in the trap are slowed and have the same energy level, forming an unusual arrangement of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. The most extravagent use of lasers in science is in the field of fusion research. Some of the world's most powerful and complex arrangements of multiple lasers and optical amplifiers are used to produce extremely high intensity pulses of light of extremely short duration. These pulses are arranged such that they impact pellets of tritium-deuterium simultaneously from all directions, hoping that the squeezing effect of the impacts will induce atomic fusion in the pellets. This technique, known as inertial confinement fusion so-far has not been able to achive breakeven, that is, less power is generated by the fusion reaction than is used to power the lasers, but research continues. |
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