Making use of laser speckle

Laura Bates
Saturday 3 December 2016

Measurement of wavelength using laser speckle

Prof. Kishan Dholakia
School of Physics and Astronomy

Prof. Kishan Dholakia

Light is a wave and it is well known waves can interfere creating patterns with constructive (bright) and destructive (dark) regions. For a laser this means we can create a granular pattern – a speckle pattern- that is rich in information about the incoming waves. We show how we can use this pattern from a laser as a signature to measure the laser wavelength to high accuracy and use it to remove laser fluctuations and thus stabilise a laser. This has applications for laser measurement, spectroscopy and stabilising lasers for quantum applications.

Related topics

Share this story