Created by physicists chip can replace the laser system – BBC

01.01.2016, 18:04

A group of Russian and Swiss physicists created a chip – optical comb, which is capable of generating femtosecond pulses of light with a special frequency spectrum, that is, to do what was possible to achieve a first by a large and complex laser systems. The announcement of this published 1 January in the journal Science.

femtosecond optical comb – a recent invention. Introduced in the late 90s, they were so popular in a variety of areas that already in 2005 their creators Theodor Hänsch and John Hall received the Nobel Prize for it. In 2007 obtained the optical comb to create them is not required cumbersome and complicated installation. Now it is possible to reduce the size of the orders of the devices. However, scientists have only found the possibility in principle to create a comb in a similar way – that in the end it turned out, was far from ideal. One problem was the problem of noise.

In collaboration with foreign colleagues, scientists of the Physics Department of Moscow State University in the early 2013 solved this problem by showing that the noise are not of a fundamental nature, and show how you can get rid of them. At the end of the same year, physicists were able to make the “right” of the comb and create a series of pulses with a very short, femtosecond duration.

To create such combs Physics, Moscow State University and Russian Quantum Center suggested the use of solitons – compactly packaged waves peculiar electromagnetic tsunami, which behave as particles. Irradiation of laser light from the disk such nonlinear medium generates these discs orbiting solitons whereby there is a sequence of pulses following one another at the time of one circumference of the disc bypass soliton. The physicists used as a resonator mm disc of magnesium fluoride crystal. With it, they were able to get a comb-duration pulses of 100-200 fs.

In 2015, a Russian-Swiss team has learned to build on the success and sprayed special combs for microcavities in the chips, as well as reduced the pulse duration to 30 femtoseconds . As a result, scientists were able to very substantially reduce the size, complexity and cost of generators combs, as well as to open new horizons for the use of modes, unattainable by other methods.

‘,’ comments_count_plural ‘: ['

% s

','

% s

','

% s

']}); rambler_comments (‘load_comments_count’, {appId: 3}); }}); $ (‘.button_give_comments’). On (‘ click ‘, function () {location.hash = “comments”; rambler_comments (‘ load ‘, {xid: “n8082629″, appId: 3}); $ (‘ .rambler -comments’). show (); $ (this) .hide (); var destination = $ (‘#comments’). offset (). top; $ (‘ body ‘). animate ({scrollTop: destination}, 1100);});