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Creating Large-Output Lasers for Long-Distance Measurement

Can large-output lasers be used to identify materials at long distances? University of Michigan electrical engineer Mohammed Islam is working to create lasers that have an output power of up to 50 watts, allowing them to be used to measure items that are more than a kilometer away. Islam hopes these fiber lasers will provide a broadband solution for identification that has applications in a variety fields, ranging from medicine to environmental studies.

Topics:
Communications Fiber Optics Lasers & Laser Systems Lighting Materials Measuring Instruments Photonics Power Test & Measurement

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    Transcript

    00:00:02 we're working on fiber lasers for different applications in particular identifying materials based on their chemical composition you're already used to looking at cameras uh which might be two-dimensional or three-dimensional and some might just add the fourth dimension namely the material properties it's much like fingerprinting on your own self so each one of us have

    00:00:22 lines on our fingers we identify each person uniquely based on a pattern of the lines to look at a pattern of spectrum lines you need Broadband source and so the sun provides that but the problem is of course it only works from like 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on a sunny day and so what we do is we provide a 24/7 capability using this laser the problem with most lasers is if

    00:00:46 you think about your laser pointer like your green laser pointer or your red laser pointer that they tend to be narrow band and so that becomes a problem of how do you use a laser to do Broadband spectroscopy so you say well I'll use a lamp because we know that our are incandescent light bulbs or tunon light bulbs these are very Broadband but the problem is that if you're doing

    00:01:05 remote sensing as an example in our test fed where we're measuring things 1.6 km away well the light refracts too rapidly and again the beauty of this light source is it stays columnated what's unique about our architecture is number one we use standard off-the-shelf Telecom Parts telecommunication Parts uh but the other thing is by simply increasing uh the

    00:01:29 pulse repetition rate and increasing the power of the amplifiers we can boost the output power so as an example 5 watts is here 25 watts is here and we already are working on the 50 wat design there's very few other lasers out there that can easily take the same kind of architecture and scale up and power we've built prototypes and higher

    00:01:50 power uh tabletop versions for the intelligence community and the Air Force but there's lots of other applications as well monitoring the environment climate change there's also medical applications you can do energy exploration using it so once you show it to people it turns them into Believers because they realize that boy this is something that could be

    00:02:10 turned into a product that you know really could meet some of our needs