Applications
As R&D progresses lasers help to achieve new goals and break boundaries in new and old parts of any industry.
Car headlights
Laser light generates extremely high luminosity which is far above the brightness of conventional technologies. The brightness is also four times that of the LED. The extreme brightness allows the use of very small optical components. These can be arranged as required in the headlight, thus creating a good deal of design freedom for the headlight designer. Conversely, optical systems of similar size, as used in LED applications, lead to extreme ranges. The current series production vehicles attain ranges of up to 600 metres.
General lighting
A single light source can light up an entire house. This will give designers greater flexibility and provide us with brightly lit up households at high cost efficiency.
Atomic clocks
Applications from global communications to satellite navigation, surveying and transport systems are underpinned by precise timing, and the same stable and accurate time scale must be in use everywhere for such systems to operate correctly. Lasers are used to cool down atoms in the clocks to absolute zero.
Sensors
Some key benefits to infrared laser sensors are: fast data rates, small beam footprint, and ability to penetrate air-borne particulates, scanning capabilities, multiple target detection, and measurements to most surfaces and targets that are independent of incident angle.
Projection
Lasers can be built to create whatever wavelength of light we want. So wider colour gamuts are possible without brightness issues. That translates to deeper, richer colors that come closer than ever to the vast range of colors our eyes can appreciate.
Underwater communication
There is a growing need in maritime applications to quickly transfer large volumes of information between different units or in a sensor network. Radio frequency (RF) channels and satellite links on ships are often limited to data rates of some hundreds of kilobits per second to some megabits per second. Laser links offer the opportunity to overcome these restrictions for optical line-of-sight communications due to the very high frequencies used and, when compared to conventional RF links, the angle of the transmitting laser beam is small.
Quantumm technology
Imagine a quantum gravity and magnetic field sensor that can detect: submarines, minerals, sinkholes, underground treasures… Nothing will be able to hide from you anymore.
Li-Fi
Li-Fi, which uses visible light to transmit signals wirelessly, is an emerging technology poised to compete with Wi-Fi.
Holograms
In its pure form, holography requires the use of laser light for illuminating the subject and for viewing the finished hologram. In a side-by-side comparison under optimal conditions, a holographic image is visually indistinguishable from the actual subject, if the hologram and the subject are lit just as they were at the time of recording.