Tux
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- Aug 6, 2010
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I was at a world class laser lab this week (top in the world). One of the many experiments that was going on was using a femto-second laser aimed at small piece of copper inside a vacume. The energy of the laser would excite the electrons in the copper out of the atom and cause the copper to enter into a state of plasma. Because the laser is pulsing at 10^15 times a second the copper has a very short amount of time to enter into the plasma state and then back into its original state between pulses. The electrons leaving and re-entering the copper atoms somehow creates x-rays!! They didn't get into much detail on how this phenomenon works though . I do know that it is a class IV laser and somewhere between 532nm-805nm in wavelength. I do remembeer "x-ray" laser being mentioned