CU-Prime Talk: "The World's Weirdest Laser" (Claire Hansel)

Title: "The World's Weirdest Laser"
Speaker: Claire Hansel
Abstract: Forget everything you think you know about lasers! In an ion channel laser, a beam of electrons from a particle accelerator oscillates in a plasma and produces coherent radiation. It’s a classical laser, with no quantum mechanics needed to understand the principle of operation. In this talk I'll explain how the ion channel laser works, my group’s plans for the first demonstration of an optical wavelength ion channel laser at SLAC national lab’s kilometer-long electron accelerator, and how one day ion channel lasers might compactly produce x-rays with broad applications across science.

Claire is a graduate student with Prof. Michael Litos at CIPS and the University of Colorado Boulder.

Contents:
00:00 - Introduction
00:41 - Talk (§1 Particle Accelerators)
06:09 - Discussion (how to accelerate a charged beam?)
12:50 - Discussion (how would plasma react to a beam?)
18:01 - Talk (§2 Quantum Lasers)
23:36 - Talk (§3 Classical Lasers)
33:00 - Talk (§4 The World's Weirdest Laser)
38:48 - Talk (§5 A Few Final Points)
41:52 - Closing announcements
42:26 - Audience questions

For more information about the CU-Prime talk series, visit us online at http://cuprime.org/talks.