Remember when I said I was a lighting nerd?  Yeah.

So, very recently, diamonds have been used in Raman lasers emitting at 573nm.  The teacher in me says that you should know 573 nanometers as landing smack dab on the edge of the green spectrum.  The dork in me says “WOW!  Diamonds used in a Raman laser, at 573NM?!”  Check out the article at optics.org about this very subject when you’re done with this article.

What’s a Raman laser, right?  Raman lasers are based on a scattering method by two folks who developed it, and because of its properties, it gets used in devices that amplify an optical signal without having to first convert it to electrical energy, like in an audio amp.

Diamond gets a good rep because of its thermal conductivity - or rather, it’s ridiculously high thermal conductivity.  If you know optics, you know that diamond has an Index of Refraction of 2.42.  Diamond’s generally a good medium for optics in lasers.

What is “interesting” about being able to use diamonds along with this means of boosting the beam quality of a laser is that with such a high-powered beam of light, a new market of weaponry research will probably open up.  Granted I am not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing - but it is a thing, and a very real thing.  Right now, however, this process is being hindered by the ability to reproduce (ie, grow) large, high purity, low defect crystals.

There will be more information on this in the future, I’m sure.  This is a pretty important discovery as far as laser technology goes.  Nerdiness is over.  Have a good weekend.

One of the more interesting visual displays at LDI came from the good folks at LaserNet, who had big ol’ green argon beams shooting all over the convention center!  When I walked onto the floor this year, I saw the LaserNet booth immediately, and made my way over.  It’s always one of my first stops, as I’m an old laser dork from back in the times of Real Genius.

Anyone remember that old flick?

Check out LaserNet’s website - they do all kinds of great looking production in the rainbow of laser colors.  The beam splitter to images and text is always a beautiful thing.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

This is called a Vindicator, and it’s a fiber-optic based laser “module, processor, control system interface, and remote lens assembly,” to quote the product page.  Oh Hell.  Catch The Wind, Inc, I am going to pretty much copy the text from the product page - this is an awesome product.  I hope you don’t mind.  People should buy these so that wind power shows people how awesome green energy will be.  From the product page:

The Vindicator™ fiber optic laser wind sensing system is capable of measuring real-time horizontal and vertical wind speed and direction data at varying ranges ahead of the sensor location. The sensor design is based on state-of-the-art fiber optic laser technology developed and patented at Optical Air Data Systems LLC.

The Vindicator™ system is comprised of a fiber optic based laser module, processor, control system interface, and a remote lens assembly. The laser module and processor are housed in a separate assembly that may be located either within the wind turbine nacelle, or with the remote lens assembly.

Using concepts of Doppler radar, with light as the medium of detection, the Vindicator™ system quickly senses air particle movement. The system processor analyzes the air particle movement producing speed and direction data for wind field determination. The first production variant of the Vindicator™ system will sense the wind out to 300 meters; as industry learns how to utilize and integrate this new technology into various applications, longer ranges can be incorporated.

How does the Vindicator™ laser wind sensor work?

The Vindicator™ wind sensing system works by integrating with a wind turbine’s control system, or electronic brain. The system’s fiber optic lasers sense the wind that is approaching the wind turbine at a range of 300 meters and report this information to the control system in sufficient time to adjust and orient the turbine. Utilizing control algorithms, the control system will decide how to best exploit the wind that is approaching the turbine and command internal systems to either change blade pitch and/or re-orient the entire nacelle in an effort to maintain efficiency, reduce the effects of wind shear and gusts, or maintain a constant blade speed. Without the Vindicator™ laser wind sensor, wind turbines will continue to be out of phase with changes in the prevailing wind.