[HN Gopher] Any Color You Like: NIST Scientists Create 'Any Wave...
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Any Color You Like: NIST Scientists Create 'Any Wavelength' Lasers
Author : rbanffy
Score : 65 points
Date : 2026-04-18 20:54 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nist.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nist.gov)
| mapt wrote:
| Is there a single person here interested in photonic computing
| that wants to explain to the class if there's any "there" there?
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| There's a lot of people here with esoteric knowledge of lasers,
| because they're generally incredible devices (along with
| masers). Someone should be able to comment.
|
| I wish we had a large laser manufacturing ability in the West.
| I would say 95% of lasers of all kinds are manufactured in
| China.
| db48x wrote:
| It's like any other fundamental research: you don't know how
| much it's worth until people start using it to solve real
| problems. This is something that is literally impossible to
| guess ahead of time. The most abstract mathematical techniques
| could turn into a trillion-dollar industry (number theory begat
| RSA encryption which now underpins _everything_ we do).
|
| But I will say that precise control of laser wavelength is
| critical to today's communication technologies. I doubt their
| new techniques will be useless.
| topspin wrote:
| There is there there...
|
| The substance is they've created a way to fabricate a device
| that can make the optical frequencies they wish. That is
| useful: it means a designer isn't limited to frequencies that
| are economic to generate with existing techniques, which is a
| constraint that lasers currently struggle with: low cost,
| compact, efficient laser sources (the kind that fit on a chip,
| and are fabricated by cost effective processes,) only exist for
| a limited number of frequencies.
|
| The story is typical tech journalism pabulum, but the
| underlying paper does discuss efficiency. It's about what you'd
| expect: 35 mW -> 6 mW @ 485 nm, for example.
|
| An obvious use case is multimode fiber communication: perhaps
| this makes it possible to use more frequencies for greater
| bandwidth and/or make the devices cheaper/smaller/more
| efficient. But there are other, more exotic things one might do
| when some optical frequency that was previously uneconomic
| becomes feasible to use at scale.
| criticalfault wrote:
| I wonder if this could also work for (e)uv
| 2ndorderthought wrote:
| Depends on the cost. We already have variable wavelength
| lasers. We have had them for years. They are currently
| expensive, large, and not the easiest things to control
| electronically.
|
| I have an application in mind for this technology outside of
| photonic computing. Again, it depends entirely on price,
| tunability, bandwidth of the profile, etc. My understanding of
| the photocomputing field is limited but I never thought the
| major issues were wavelength related? Maybe someone can educate
| me.
|
| If anyone wants to send me one of these I would be pumped.
| dado3212 wrote:
| I think it's more relevant for quantum computing. The ions we
| choose for ion trap quantum computers are in part due to what
| wavelengths are excitable by modified telecom lasers, because
| they're the wavelengths that are easiest to produce and where
| the most research/stability/miniaturization has been focused.
| If the laser wavelength is configurable to this degree then it
| no longer becomes a constraint, and maybe you can choose single
| ions with different characteristics.
| nine_k wrote:
| Immediately:
|
| * You can pack many more different colors into fiber optic
| communication lines. Every color carries a few tens of GHz in
| modulation, but the carrier light is in hundreds of THz;
| there's _a ton_ of bandwidth not used between readily available
| colors.
|
| * You can likely do interesting molecular chemistry by
| precisely adjusting laser light to the energy levels of
| particular bonds / electrons.
|
| * Maybe you can precisely target particular wavelengths /
| absorption bands for more efficient laser cutting and welding,
| if these adjustable lasers can be made high-power.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| * Concert lasers just got a lot cooler.
| SilentM68 wrote:
| Well, since I'm not that smart, I asked an AI (M5-ST-TOS) to
| think out loud for me. It said that, if true, possible
| applications could be:
|
| 1. Portable Optical Diagnostics (Lab-Grade Scanning in a Pocket
| Device) aka Star Trek Tricorder.
|
| 2. Non-Invasive Brain & Neural Imaging (Next-Gen fNIRS /
| Optogenetics).
|
| 3. Precision Photomedicine (Targeted Light-Based Therapies).
|
| 4. Medical-Grade Wearables & Implantables.
|
| 5. Ultra-Precise Medical Navigation & Imaging Calibration.
|
| 6. Drug Discovery & Molecular Research Tools.
|
| 7. Telemedicine & Remote Diagnostics.
|
| That's just in the medical field :)
| aftbit wrote:
| Cool, can I get a "proper" yellow diode laser from this? What's
| the efficiency look like?
| jiveturkey wrote:
| But can it produce magenta?
| dnnddidiej wrote:
| Magenta is the Doom of colour lasers by the look of it.
| staplung wrote:
| What if I like magenta? Or brown?
| zamadatix wrote:
| Pedantry for pedantry, you're in luck as the title says they
| created 'any wavelength lasers' not 'any wavelength laser' so
| you can make any such combos you like rather than the fixed set
| now (if true) :p.
| dullcrisp wrote:
| Can I interest you in indigo or violet? Or a nice orange?
| dnnddidiej wrote:
| Genuine q: how close can you get to magenta with the rainbow?
| nine_k wrote:
| What we call "magenta" is the sensation of both red and
| blue color-sensitive cells in the eye being excited at the
| same time. There's no single wavelength that produces this
| effect (unlike e.g. yellow). The closes you can get is
| violet, which looks faint to the eye.
|
| A rainbow gives you both red and blue; mute everything
| else, and you'll get magenta. That's what magenta pigments
| do when illuminated by white light (which is a rainbow
| scrambled).
| compass_copium wrote:
| Not very! This is on the "line of purples".
|
| Here's a nice visualization of color perception (there are
| more modern ones, but we used the 1931 color space when I
| was working in the field). The horseshoe shape on the
| outside is the single wavelength colors.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space
| analog8374 wrote:
| can they do microwave?
|
| if you do the exact right color you can make certain things melt
| very precisely.
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maser
| cheschire wrote:
| Yes but can it do any color a _mantis shrimp_ would like?
|
| https://theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp
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