Laser tabletop

Umstadter D P, Barty C, Perry M and Mourou G A 1998 Tabletop, ultrahigh intensity lasers dawn of nonlinear relativistic optics Opt. Photon. News 9 41... 

P. Maine, D. Strickland, P. Bado, M. Pessot, G. Mourou, Tabletop terawatt laser by chirped pulse amplification, IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics 24, 398 (1988)... 

A second, older type of X-ray laser uses a powerful Nd-YAG pumping laser (e.g., Nova) to excite plasmas (e.g., Ne-like Ti+12 ions), which in turn can emit soft X rays by now even tabletop soft X-ray lasers exist (using the chirped-amplification of a Nd YAG laser fired once every 3 to 4 minutes, and Ni-like Pd1 4 ions). 

In 1993, the first ultrafast vibrational echo experiments on condensed matter systems were performed using a free electron laser as the source of temporally short, tunable infrared pulses (11). Recently, the development of Ti sapphire laser-based optical parametric amplifier (OPA) systems has made it possible to produce the necessary pulses to perform vibrational echoes using a tabletop experimental system (12,13). The development and application of ultrafast, IR vibrational echoes and other IR coherent pulse sequences are providing a new approach to the study of the mechanical states of molecules in complex molecular systems such as liquids, glasses, and proteins (14-20). While the spin echo, the photon echo, and the vibrational echo are, in many respects, the same type of experiment, the term vibrational echo is used to distinguish IR experiments on vibrations from radio frequency experiments on spins or vis/UV experiments on electronic states. In this chapter, recent vibrational echo experiments on liquids, glasses, and proteins will be described. 

Finally, extremely high-power laser ablation has paved the way to the generation of pulsed tabletop x-ray [30] and neutron sources [31]. 

G.A. Mourou, C.P.J. Barty, M.D. Pery, Ultrahigh-intensity lasers physics of the extreme on a tabletop. Phys. Today, 22 (1998)... 

J. Dunn The X-ray Laser From Underground to Tabletop. https //www.finl.gov/str/Dunn. html... 

Y. Wang et al. Demonstration of high repetition rate tabletop soft X-ray laser with saturated output at wavelengths down to 13.9 mm. Phys. Rev. A 72, 053807 (2003)... 

H. Schwoerer, F. Ewald, R. Sauerbrey, J. Galy, J. Magill, V. Rondinella, R. Schenkel, T . Butz Fission of actinides using a tabletop laser. Emrophys. Lett. 66, 47 (2003)... 

The first suggestions to use electromagnetic radiation, namely, interferometers, to monitor the variation of relative distance between test masses were made in 1956 by Pirani and in 1962 by Gertsenshtein. The first tabletop prototype Michelson interferometer with an He-Ne laser and optical elements in vacuum was realized in 1970 by... 

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