One billion suns: World's brightest laser sparks new behavior in light
Physicists from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln are seeing an everyday phenomenon in a new light.
By focusing laser light to a brightness one billion times greater than the surface of the sun -- the brightest light ever produced on Earth -- the physicists have observed changes in a vision-enabling interaction between light and matter.
Those changes yielded unique X-ray pulses with the potential to generate extremely high-resolution imagery useful for medical, engineering, scientific and security purposes. The team's findings, detailed June 26 in the journal Nature Photonics, should also help inform future experiments involving high-intensity lasers.
Donald Umstadter and colleagues at the university's Extreme Light Laboratory fired their Diocles Laser at helium-suspended electrons to measure how the laser's photons -- considered both particles and waves of light -- scattered from a single electron after striking it.
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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170626124428.htm
