On an episode of "Star Trek Voyager," Capt. Janeway uses a hand-held device to check if her food was edible. On another episode, a crewmember uses a device to scan a rock formation on an alien planet. Another crewmember heals an injured patient by waving a device over the patient's forehead.
These science-fiction situations allow viewers to fantasize about the technology of the future.
"Star Trek" pushes the limits of space by "going where no man has gone before." Two K-State physics professors and an associate professor of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering are pushing the boundaries of technology by developing laser technology that might be applicable to futuristic technologies similar to those viewed on science-fiction shows like "Star Trek."
The professors are attempting to build the fastest pulsing laser in history by using attosecond optical technology based on recollision and gating, said Charles L. Cocke, university distinguished professor of physics. An attosecond is .25 billionths, billionth of a second.
"The pulses are so fast that they are about equal to the time it takes an electron to get around the nucleus of an atom," Cocke said.
Recollision is a process of shooting an X-ray at an atom. The X-ray rips the electron off the atom. The electron then returns to the atom, "colliding" with it. This recollision gives off a special kind of X-ray pulse.
Because of the size of an atom and the laser used to create the recollision, thousands of recollisions occur simultaneously. The researchers use a process of gating to control the pulses emitted by the laser. Gating allows a single pulse of energy to be released through the laser lens.
"If you have a lot of sheep and you only want one to get through, you would open the gate and only allow one sheep to go through and then close it," Cocke said. "We start with pulses about 25 times longer than [.25 attoseconds]. We use them to generate [recollision] pulses."
Cocke said the shortest pulse laser today is 125 attoseconds. The team's goal is to build a laser that pulses at 25 attoseconds. Right now, the laser pulses between 25 femtoseconds to a few hundred attoseconds. Because of the minute amounts of radiation generated by the laser, Cocke said, it would not be harmful to anyone.
Cocke and Zenghu Chang, professor of physics and project leader, are only concerned with the development of the technology on a basic level, not the application.
"The technology is very new, and we're still looking at possible application," Chang said.
The Department of Defense, specifically the Army, granted the professors $1.5 million a year for the next three years to develop the laser.
"What the Army wants to do with it, we don't know," Cocke said.
Shuting Lei, associate professor of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering, has found one application. Lei said he uses the laser to cut through materials and to identify how the laser cuts. The laser is powerful enough to cut through materials like diamonds, metal and silicone. It also can create three-dimensional objects, contour surfaces, or cut grooves.
"I want to observe how the laser interacts with the material. Does it start a fire on the surface or cut grooves into it. If so, why," Lei said about the second application.
Chang said the laser could be used to identify elements, according to a press release.
"Just like each person has his or her unique fingerprints, molecules can be identified by their unique features too," Chang said in the release. "As an example, different molecules absorb light differently. We can tell which one is made of gold and which one is made of silver just by looking at their colors."
Along with Chang's group, other groups of physicists at Texas A&M and the University of Ottawa, Canada are sharing the research into the laser technology, according to the press release. Cocke said the professor at Texas A&M is developing a different way to create the pulses rather than recollisions and gating. The teams meet once a year to discuss their progress and share information.
