Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony
What definition of 'work' are we using here? It's not like free electron lasers don't already work. Work as weapons?
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Not weapons (at least, that isn't the targeted application). It would be a compact, rugged, potentially efficient source of coherent light in the millimeter, terahertz, and long-wave IR region of the spectrum; with applications for long range chemical sensing, explosives detection, biohazard detection, orbital environmental surveillance, and imaging radar. That's what the proposal is for. "Work", in terms of this proposal, is demonstrating that the device can be built and emit light in the predicted spectral range. The whole scheme is fairly speculative, and there's a fair chance that we won't get it to do anything. Note that this is not actually a free electron laser, just conceptually similar to one in some ways (and I don't want to say much more than that without having the folks dealing with legal and IP issues giving the go-ahead, just in case there are millions in patent licencing fees involved).
Of course, if it does turn out to have a high specific power and scaling down to shorter wavelengths isn't an issue, there may be weapons applications in the future.
Luke