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CU Physicists Use Ultra-Fast Lasers
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For nearly half a century, scientists have been trying to figure out how to build a cost-effective and reasonably sized X-ray laser that could, among other things, provide super high-resolution imaging. And for the past two decades, University of Colorado at Boulder (USA) physics professors Margaret Murnane and Henry Kapteyn have been inching closer to that goal. Recent breakthroughs by their team at JILA, a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, have paved the way on how to build a tabletop X-ray laser that could be used for super high-resolution imaging, while also giving scientists a new way to peer into a single cell and gain a better understanding of the nanoworld.
Murnane and Kapteyn generate coherent laser-like X-ray beams by using an intense femtosecond laser and combining hundreds or thousands of visible photons together. And the key is they are doing it with a desktop-size system. Their method can be thought of as a coherent version of the X-ray tube, according to Murnane. In an X-ray tube, an electron is boiled off a filament, then it is accelerated in an electric field before hitting a solid target, where the kinetic energy of the electron is converted into incoherent X-rays. These incoherent X-rays are like the incoherent light from a light bulb or flashlight -- they aren't very focused. Being able to build a tabletop X-ray laser is just the beginning, said Kapteyn. Murnane and Kapteyn were recently recognized with the American Physical Society's Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science for "pioneering work in the area of ultra-fast laser science, including development of ultra-fast optical and coherent soft X-ray sources."
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Keywords: Arthur L. Schawlow Prize Henry Kapteyn Imaging JILA laser Margaret Murnane tabletop X-Ray laser University of Colorado at Boulder X-Ray
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