Laser-generated radiation for cancer therapy?

Will laser-generated radiation one day prove useful in cancer therapy? A UK collaboration aims to find out. Reported from oprtics.org:

A consortium of UK-based scientists has secured £5 million ($9.9 million) in research funding to turn the concept of laser-generated radiation into a robust, ready-to-go technology. The four-year project, involving researchers from nine separate institutions, could lead to cheaper, simpler solutions for proton and ion radiotherapy. Laser-energized radiation sources could also cut the cost of research into cosmic-radiation exposure from frequent air travel and manned space missions.

The project named LIBRA, which means Laser Induced Beams of Radiation and their Applications. Development of the technology will require access to a very high-powered laser with a rapid-fire repetition rate. One such system is the GEMINI laser, due to come on-line at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) near Oxford, UK, later this year. GEMINI is expected to deliver 1 PW (10^15 W) pulses every 20 seconds.

related links: LIBRA, GEMINI

Maintaining the cooling system for Quanta Ray - PRO

Quanta Ray lasers YAG #3 and YAG #4 could not be started, the fault signals were shown on their monitors. The possible reason is that the deionized water has not been circulated for a long time, the best way is to change the filters and refill the fresh water. We drained the water from YAG #3, and filled the vinegar for flushing the cooling system.

Theodore Maiman -- Laser Inventor Dies at 79

Theodore Maiman, PhD, inventor of the first operable laser and twice nominated for a Nobel Prize, died May 5 in Vancouver, British Columbia. His death was confirmed by his wife, Kathleen.

He had been called “the father of the electro-optics industry,” according to a biography at the IEEE virtual Museum, but Maiman considered himself "a scientist and an engineer, with research interests in electro-optics, lasers, displays and aerodynamics."

Source: Photonics.com

Low Evolution X output power

The Evolution -- the DPSS Q-switched green laser is used to pump the Ti:sapphire crystal for regeneration amplifier of 30 fs laser pulses. However its output power was dropped dramatically when we operated it this morning. The power could not be changed very much when we tuned two cavity mirrors. Later we adjusted the diodes temperature between 80F and 83F, the power just fluctuated from 22mW to 18mV when the output was set at 23%. In the normal way, the power should be around 600mW.

Ultrashort laser pulse around 100 attoseconds

Working at Italy's National Laboratory for Ultrafast and Ultraintense Optical Science in Milan (as well as laboratories in Padua and Naples), the researchers believe that their current technique will allow them to create even shorter pulses well below 100 attoseconds. Results will be presented in Baltimore at CLEO/QELS, May 6 – May 11.

Creating a single isolated attosecond pulse, rather than a train of them, is more complex. To do this, the researchers employ their previously developed technique for delivering intense short (5 femtoseconds, or millionths of a billionth of a second) laser pulses to an argon gas target. They use additional optical techniques (including ones borrowed from the research that won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics) for creating and shaping a single attosecond pulse. Light pulses lasting just 130 attoseconds offer possibilities for unlocking secrets of atoms and molecules.

Related Link: National Laboratory for Ultrafast and Ultraintense Optical Science
Source: PhysOrg.com