HN Reader

Actual paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-025-01769-z DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-025-01769-z

" We show microcombs with total on-chip power levels up to 158 mW and comb lines with an intrinsic linewidth as narrow as 200 kHz."

150mW is a lot for a single-chip laser, given that the eye safety limit for standard red laser pointers is about 5mW.

"Beyond data centers, the same chips could enable portable spectrometers"

Tricorders ftw

In astronomy, laser frequency combs are horribly expensive (~$0.5M), but fantastic for calibrating high precision spectrographs. It would be interesting to see if this method could be tuned for that application (namely, shifting to the visible), such to enable cheaper spectrographs.

could you use this in show lasers? currently they use RGB mixing with electro-acoustical crystals for intensity modulation.

How would you modulate the individual wavelengths, considering they all come from the same source ?

I had, maybe naively assumed that laser diodes were switched on/off electronically to modulate a signal. With this laser you’d have to modulate after the light source somehow ?

Notice the breakthrough was accomplished in a lab which is utilizing more square-footage of "bench" space (/"shelf" space) compared to floor space than most other labs you will find.

Almost like a storage room, except with as much operational, calibrated equipment at the fingertips as the working room would possibly fit.

Regardless of the essential auxiliary storage space having at least 5x the square footage of the working lab itself. Where hopefully at least 20% of the equipment there is operational, if not currently calibrated or in use. Which would then equal the amount in operation in the lab.

If the storage area is down the hall, or maybe in the basement, or a convenient nearby building, the same breakthroughs will be possible by the same researchers.

It will just take more time the further the storage area is, and the more pieces of equipment for which there is no backup in storage.

And way more time if at all, when the storage area is too small to get the job done.

Anything less and you're shooting yourself in the "footage" :)

>Cleaning up messy light

Or cleaning up your messy lab, you can have both, you just have to prioritize what you want to accomplish more of in your lifetime.

This seems like the kind of technology that will quietly revolutionize a lot of things in 10 years when manufacturing is figured out.