MIT News December 10, 2018
For experiments, a team of researchers in the US (MIT, Sandia National Laboratory) fabricated an array of 10 pi-coupled wire lasers which has high constant power, tight beam pattern, and broad electric frequency tuning. The laser operated with continuous frequency tuning in a span of about 10 gigahertz, and a power output of roughly 50 to 90 milliwatts, depending on how many pi-coupled laser pairs are on the array. The beam has a low beam divergence of 10 degrees, which is a measure of how much the beam strays from its focus over distances. The optimized laser can be used to detect interstellar elements in an upcoming NASA mission, for improved skin and breast cancer imaging, detecting drugs and explosives, and much more…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
A tiny terahertz laser designed by MIT researchers is the first to reach three key performance goals at once: high power, tight beam, and broad frequency tuning. Courtesy of the researchers