D-shaped design eradicates instabilities in high-power lasers

High-powered lasers are used in materials processing, large-scale displays, laser surgery and LiDar, but instabilities can occur in the laser that limit their usage. This instability poses no problems for applications such as laser pointers, but becomes problematic for lasers operating at high power.

The scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), Yale University and Imperial College London and Cardiff University have developed a D-shaped laser that regulates the light emission patterns and eliminates such laser instabilities to potentially reduce the degree of fluctuations in the laser output. The team’s findings are published online in Science.

“Traditional lasers emit fluctuations in light waves that limit their usefulness,” said NTU Associate Professor Wang Qijie. “To prevent them from forming, we created an irregular-shaped laser cavity that causes light to bounce off the walls of the cavity in an unpredictable manner that however results in a stable light stream. It’s like using chaos to deal with chaos.”