laser - Mario Tonin

How do big telescopes look through the atmosphere – Adaptative Optics 101

April 25th, 2023Mario Tonin0 Comments

Continuing my series of post covering my talk from last Christmas about the use of lasers in space and astronomy. The topic today is adaptative optics. I’ll explain the reason why we need it, and how it works in simple terms. Enjoy. No surprise: telescopes are the main tool of astronomers. Since Newton, we have built countless telescopes of various sizes and shapes. And lately, we even send them to space. We have Hubble, the JSWT for the more famous, and a lot of other space telescopes less known. But why sending them to space? After all, space is difficult. …

What is the difference between a regular lamp and a laser? A brief history of Optics and Lasers

April 23rd, 2023Mario Tonin0 Comments

So this post and a bunch after this one are from a talk I presented at the end December on the topic of lasers in space and astronomy. The target the audience was members from astronomy groups in the region with some knowledge of optics but not necessarily lasers and the curious people that might be interested but have a physics background from high school. I tried to make it interesting for a wide audience, and I would say that it is accessible to some degree to someone in high school, maybe earlier? Anyway, the goal was to be entertaining, …

Digital photonics and laser lightning rods from AKL22

May 28th, 2022Mario Tonin0 Comments

I was at AKL 22 a couple of weeks ago: the international laser technology congress at Aachen, Germany. I was present for the interesting technology conference and the live presentations at Fraunhofer ILT. I have to say that after 2 years of Covid and only being able to assist to virtual conferences if available was a breath of fresh air. Virtual events are nice and you can still learn a few things, but physical events are something else. You are invested in what you hear and there is less distraction than in the office. The best part is that you …

Laser physics: gain medium and population inversion

November 14th, 2021Mario Tonin0 Comments

Continuing the series on lasers. In the first part, I went fast over plenty of concepts and left others on the side because they were not necessary to get a global understanding of lasers. Here, I want to get a little deeper in some specific concepts. I want to talk more in details about the gain medium of a laser and why population inversion is a vital concept. For now, I have been relatively simple on the gain medium characteristics… I have considered a simple material with two atomic energy levels, and I have been assuming that the transition is …

An introduction on laser physics

October 28th, 2021Mario Tonin0 Comments

So I want to start a series of posts that will focus mostly on lasers, what they are, how they work, what are the most important elements, etc… It can still evolve. Some prerequisites first: To fully understand what I will write, here, it definitely helps to be familiar with a few concepts and bases from electromagnetism and optics, obviously. I’ll try to explain these concepts along the way of course. Nevertheless, even if you don’t have the necessary background, keep reading. I’ll try to keep it simple and limit the mathematics to a minimum. It’s no surprise that lasers …

How to direct lightning with a laser…

October 1st, 2021Mario Tonin0 Comments

Climate change is a mess. It’s hotter in some places, colder in other, and in general, severe weather is intensifying with longer droughts, heavier rainfalls and stronger storms. This problem, caused mostly by our method of generation of energy relying on burning fuel and releasing carbon dioxide in the air has a few solutions, among them: the wind turbine to harvest wind energy and generate clean electricity. But, here is a slight problem. A few days ago, I stumbled upon an article[1] explaining how wind turbines are actually at risk of severe damages when thunderstorms occur. The issue here is …