Is putting carbon free laser-driven fusion energy on the grid by the 2030s possible? It depends largely on public-private partnerships, funding, and efforts to improve the U.S. National Ignition Facility's laser shot rate and its repetition rate.
A new type of surface-emitting laser reduces complexity compared to traditional vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser approaches, thanks to nanoridges and lasing that stems from a photonic crystal cavity rather than thick distributed Bragg reflector mirror stacks.
Case study: MKS Ophir's high-speed M-2 beam measurement device boosts laser manufacturing quality for Bloom Lasers.
Traditional lenses made of germanium tend to cost hundreds or thousands of dollars and can't be repaired when damaged but a lower-cost sulfur polymer lens option is about to become a gamechanger for infrared (IR) thermal imaging cameras because it can be mass produced, repaired, and recycled.
Microlenses inside optical cavities allow physicists to tightly focus light onto single atoms in a way that's both efficient and massively parallel-and it looks promising for building faster distributed quantum computers.
