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Titanium sapphire crystal in optical frequency comb laser
A titanium sapphire crystal in an optical frequency comb laser in the lab of the Cundiff group at JILA. Combs are spectra consisting of hundreds of thousands of evenly spaced, sharp spectral lines (colors) produced by extremely stable, ultrafast 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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