Environmentally stable laser emits exceptionally pure light

Researchers have developed a compact laser that emits light with extreme spectral purity that doesn't change in response to environmental conditions. The new potentially portable laser could benefit a host of scientific applications, improve clocks for global positioning (GPS) systems, advance the detection of gravitational waves in space and be useful for quantum computing.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory, USA describe their new laser in Optica, The Optical Society's journal for high impact research.