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Scientists Create World's First Atomic X-Ray Laser
New submitter newmission33 writes "Government researchers have created the fastest, purest X-ray laser pulses ever achieved, and have fulfilled a 1967 prediction that an atomic scale X-ray laser could be made in the same manner as visible-light lasers, according to a statement released Wednesday. Researchers at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory used the Linac Coherent Light Source to aim a powerful X-ray source beam, a billion times brighter than any previous source, at a capsule of neon gas and triggered an 'avalanche' of X-ray emissions to become the world's first 'atomic X-ray laser.'"
Throw in a "jet" and "rocket" and I think we'll be all set.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
I don't mean if this is useful or not, the article clearly states how it is.
I mean, the pump laser, the one that excites the lasing medium (in this case neon gas). Does it have to be x-ray?
Would a coherent beam of some other, more easily produced frequency, or even a highly charged cathode beam, be sufficient to induce the xray emission cascade as well?
That will be difficult since your average bacterium lacks an anus - wait, what?
Nonsense.
This is a fantastic advancement. Remember those photographs of alkanes that showed the P orbital zones slashdot ran a story on sometime last year
Remember how fuzzy they were?
This badboy would make thoe pictures much, much clearer.
"The Crossbow Project. There's No Defense Like a Good Offense."
Disect the terms.
Atomic = the lasing medium is made of single, free atoms of the same element.
Xray = emits photons in the xray portion of the spectrum.
Laser = light is amplified by the stimulated emission of radiation. A source light source causes electrons in the laser's gain medium to fall out of their normal orbitals. When the fall back in, they emit a photon of a very specific wavelength. These photons bump more electrons out, more photons get produced, and the beam amplifies.
So, an atomic xray laser is a laser using atomic monomers as the gain medium, that produces coherent xray radiation.
Now then. Xray radiation is a powerful ionising radiation. This is not a toy. It does very bad things to living tissue, and can destroy chemical bonds purely from the beam's energy. It is a penetrating radiation, and is therefor dangerous even through walls. Keep out of reach of children and slashdot posters.
I bet this could be used to make a death ray.
of reading Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, and wishing I could find an abandoned museum with a freakin' x-ray laser in it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8225491.stm
These were taken with an AFM, (atomic force microscope. Essentially a single atom stuck to the end of a nanoscopic cantelever) but this xray laser light source would theoretically permit direct image capture, at very high speeds.
Xray wavelengths are very tiny. The only light with a smaller wavelength is gamma ray emissions.
Xrays are frequently used to study crystal structues, but the very precise nature and rapid activation speed of this source makes it useful for a whole lot more.
But will it blend?
I wouldn't call this laser "the same manner as visible-light lasers" really, it lacks one of the fundamental features of a normal laser - self amplification via feedback from mirrors.
It sounds like this could be the _basis_ for a laser, as a pump source causes superluminescence, but without feedback it won't be particularly directional.
Perhaps if it can be triggered to start the avalanche at one end a directional burst could be achieved though, kind of like a nitrogen laser.
HIgher energy X-rays are penetrating, but these are of fairly low energy. The Nature abstract (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v481/n7382/full/nature10721.html) gives a bit more info. The X-ray energy is 849 eV. X-rays at this energy which are actually attenuated pretty well by air, and certainly by walls.
Fantastic. I shall read it when I have more time!
Where are the atomic-level sharks with atomic-level lasers attached to their heads?
Sig this!
Remember how fuzzy they were?
This badboy would make thoe pictures much, much clearer.
Actually, those pictures are fuzzy partly because the orbitals themselves are fuzzy. You probably can't get much more detail than that; the detail doesn't exist.
At any rate, X-rays interacting with a single molecule like this one would likely knock electrons right off of it, thereby disrupting the very thing you're trying to image. Crystal X-ray diffraction imaging doesn't have that problem because of the countless copies of molecules available.
This will probably be handheld.
Where I can get a few fricken sharks?
Just saying...
the first use I thought for such a device was to make home-size non-Uranium nuclear reactors (Thorium, Hafnium) a practical reality.
My guess is the x-rays travel at 299,792,458 m/s - just like every other photon.
Perhaps the poster's meaning is "pulse with the shortest duration"
You make me wish I'd paid greater attention in my high school chemistry course. Thanks for the details! :)
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excalibur
(when head-mounted on shark, you don't get your shark back)
You probably can't get much more detail than that; the detail doesn't exist.
You just have to Zoom, then Enhance.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
We treat the X-ray safety in a way similar to the high energy beam safety at the lab. Shielding, interlocked doors, monitoring, etc. For the soft X-rays in this experiment there is very little risk, they don't go far through air, but for hard X-ray operation we need to use more protection.
-- -Joe Frisch
With fabs already using DeepUV lasers and phase-shifting masks, the ability to do x-ray pulses would seem to me (I am not a phsyicist) to make it possibly to use for wafer lithography to produce much smaller chip geometries than we have today. A pulse laser would make it much easier to do that without damaging the chip (since x-rays are very freaking energetic indeed). So Moore's Law might get a new lease on life, assuming that this technology is capable of being commercialized.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
hmm i wonder when when they will build a gamma wave laser so we can image fundamental particles.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
I bet the TSA has one first.
Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?
That's how LHC works, they just use particles other than gamma rays. 3.5 TeV corresponds to wavelength of 2e-19 m.
I would like to point out that the neon is not actually a gain medium. They lose an enormous amount of power in this process; however, they get a much tighter distribution of frequencies and are able to more precisely control the pulses. The source of radiation for this is a laser. It's a free electron laser; until now, nobody was ever able to get any atomic medium to meet lasing conditions.
The reason this is is interesting is that as laser frequency increases (and thus photon energy) it becomes extraordinarily difficult to maintain a population inversion. Very cool stuff.
Vault-Tec stock is up!
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
WARNING: Do not look into the atomic x-ray laser with remaining head.
since E=h*v, the energy output is amazing- a true death ray - you could fry any missile in flight. what's the name of those russian things the iraqis are shooting at israel? Actually, Edward teller conceived an interesting design for an xray laser. A thermonuclear weapon i space encased by a porcupine shell of tungsten rods. The rods are aimed at their targts an when the thermonuclear weapon is detonated, the gamma rays shoot down the tungsten rods and xrays are generated. presto, goldfinger would be jealous. of course there is the little problem of clean up afterwards...
Don't forget to uncrop first.
Hardcore X-ray operation-... now WITHOUT protection!
(Surely I can't have been the only one to think this)
There's a similar project currently being built in Hamburg, Germany, the European XFEL. Compared to the LCLS, it will have 8 times the maximum, 600 times the average brilliance, up to 3 times smaller wavelength, and/or 200 times the flash rate.
http://www.xfel.eu/overview/in_brief
http://www.xfel.eu/overview/in_comparison
Remember how fuzzy they were?
Actually, those pictures are fuzzy partly because the orbitals themselves are fuzzy.
::sigh:: "it can't be helped."
Xray wavelengths are very tiny. The only light with a smaller wavelength is gamma ray emissions.
Actually, there's a huge overlap. It would be more accurate to say that it's called X-rays if it is from a synthetic source and gamma rays if it is from a natural source. The most common nearby natural source is transitions in unstable nuclei. Of course, those high-energy short-wavelength photons don't care what they came from; it's not like they're labelled or anything like that...
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Now we just need impeller drive, few big spaceships, and David Weber's Honorverse becomes reality.
Bolt it onto my rocket ship! We'll show those foul martians you don't mess with earth!
Perhaps this has applications for silicon photolithography?
The semiconductor industry is already using ultraviolet because the minimum feature size created by photolithography is limited by the wavelength of the light. X-rays have a wavelength of about 1 nanometer (< 5 Si atoms). That should be small enough to push silicon semiconductors to their ultimate limit.
It still happens in XRD though, and is potentially a problem when trying to image protein crystals, which are tough enough to image accurately as it is without your probing source ionising atoms in your sample.
The most evil Atomic X-ray Laserinator in the Tri-State Area!
Baseless self confidence kills more people each year than bathtubs.
Why should black holes have all the fun?
MIT prof Peter Hagelstein made one in the 1980s while working for energy labs. This fell into the class of "3rd generation nuclear weapons" which included very customized radiation outputs. And this excited Teller and Reagan into the "Star Wars" defense shield program. I dont think that program is dead yet, but highly morphed.
To cookoff munitions inside a tank?
Not a problem in most cases if you think about relative timescales of scattering vs. atomic transitions...