{"id":115556,"date":"2020-11-07T04:51:30","date_gmt":"2020-11-07T12:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/researchers-develop-a-high-power-portable-terahertz-laser"},"modified":"2020-11-07T04:51:30","modified_gmt":"2020-11-07T12:51:30","slug":"researchers-develop-a-high-power-portable-terahertz-laser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/researchers-develop-a-high-power-portable-terahertz-laser","title":{"rendered":"Researchers develop a high-power, portable terahertz laser"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/researchers-develop-a-high-power-portable-terahertz-laser.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at MIT and the University of Waterloo have developed a high-power, portable version of a device called a quantum cascade laser, which can generate terahertz radiation outside of a laboratory setting. The laser could potentially be used in applications such as pinpointing skin cancer and detecting hidden explosives.<\/p>\n<p>Until now, generation of <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/terahertz+radiation\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">terahertz radiation<\/a> powerful enough to perform real-time imaging and fast spectral measurements required temperatures far below 200 Kelvin (&minus;100 degrees Fahrenheit) or lower. These temperatures could only be achieved with bulky equipment that limited the technology\u2019s use to a laboratory setting. In a paper published in <i>Nature Photonics<\/i>, MIT Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Qing Hu and his colleagues report that their terahertz <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/quantum+cascade+laser\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">quantum cascade laser<\/a> can function at temperatures of up to 250 K (&minus;10 degrees Fahrenheit), meaning that only a compact portable cooler is required.<\/p>\n<p>Terahertz quantum cascade lasers, tiny chip-embedded semiconductor laser devices, were first invented in 2002, but adapting them to operate far above 200 K proved to be so difficult that many people in the field speculated that there was a fundamental physical reason preventing it, Hu says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at MIT and the University of Waterloo have developed a high-power, portable version of a device called a quantum cascade laser, which can generate terahertz radiation outside of a laboratory setting. The laser could potentially be used in applications such as pinpointing skin cancer and detecting hidden explosives. Until now, generation of terahertz radiation [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1523,1617,2414],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-computing","category-quantum-physics","category-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}