NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers

Article

• NIST creates on-chip lasers tunable to any visible wavelength using tantala material
• Single input laser produces full rainbow of output frequencies on tiny circuits
• Potential applications: photonic computing, quantum computing, next-gen displays

Discussion

• Excitement for ion trap quantum computing where exact laser wavelength per ion species is critical
• Display use case: dynamic primaries could show far wider color gamut than RGB
• Wafer rainbow photo called misleading — it’s diffraction, not actual laser output colors
• Speculation about photonic float types and multi-wavelength thread parallelism

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