JILA’s three-dimensional (3-D) quantum gasoline atomic clock consists of a grid of sunshine fashioned by three pairs of laser beams. A stack of two tables is used to configure optical elements round a vacuum chamber. Proven right here is the higher desk, the place lenses and different optics are mounted. A blue laser beam excites a cube-shaped cloud of strontium atoms situated behind the spherical window in the midst of the desk. Strontium atoms fluorescence strongly when excited with blue gentle, creating the sight seen right here. (Credit score: G.E. Marti/JILA)
Amplifying the power inside a laser, again and again, gained’t get you an infinite quantity of power. There’s a elementary restrict on account of physics.
Again in the midst of the twentieth century, there was actually no good method to create purely monochromatic gentle: the place the entire photons possessed…