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March 18, 2014

Optical frequency comb laser setup

An optical frequency comb laser setup in the lab of the Cundiff Group at JILA.

More about this image
Combs are spectra consisting of hundreds of thousands of evenly spaced, sharp spectral lines (colors) produced by extremely stable, ultra-fast lasers. The line spacing in these spectra is so exact that combs can be used to precisely measure the frequency of hundreds of thousands of discreet colors of light. These new rulers of light are now providing measurement precision that was unheard of until 2003.

JILA is a joint institute of the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

You can learn more about optical frequency combs Here. (Date of Image: August 2009)

Credit: Greg Kuebler, JILA

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