Ultrafast lasers generate bursts of light that last only a few hundred femtoseconds, each one just a quadrillionth of a second long. These extremely short pulses are used in a wide range of technologies, including precision manufacturing, eye surgery, and optical frequency combs, the Nobel Prize-winning innovation that powers the world’s most accurate optical atomic clocks.
Despite their importance, ultrafast lasers have generally remained large, costly systems that occupy entire optical tables in research laboratories. After more than two decades of work by scientists around the world, shrinking these devices onto a photonic chip has remained an elusive goal.
Now researchers led by Professor Tobias J. Kippenberg at EPFL have achieved that milestone. Writing in Nature, the team reports the first integrated ultrafast laser capable of matching the performance of traditional tabletop femtosecond lasers, producing pulses as short as 147 femtoseconds with energies reaching 1.05 nanojoules.
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