What is a laser?
LASER stands for ‘Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation’
Lasers produce a special light with amazing properties. The first laser was called the Ruby laser, built in 1960.
Light is made up of particles called photons. In laser light they move together in a formation… while a lot of the light around you is much more jumbled up with very different colours!
Some lasers are great at helping us test what
materials do in very extreme conditions! We can:
Explore how matter interacts
Replicate stellar explosions
Accelerate particles
Increasing wavelength (redder)
Decreasing wavelength (bluer)
Our Lasers
We have a number of versatile laser labs which are all free for academic researchers to use. Our lasers have made it into the Guinness Book of World Records, been broadcast on national radio, levitated tiny objects like a tractor beam, and much more. Find out below about what each of our lasers can do.
Did you know? In 2005, Vulcan made the history books as a Guinness World Record holder, certified as being the world’s most intense laser.
Coming Soon: Vulcan 20-20
If you’ve only heard of one of our lasers then there is a really high probability that it is Vulcan.
This might be because it was our oldest laser (first shot on 28th April 1977) or more likely because it was one of the most powerful lasers in the world, capable of producing a focused beam that was the equivalent of 10,000 times more powerful than the National Grid!
However, what’s useful about lasers like Vulcan is that they are low energy (a.k.a. they don’t actually draw that much from the power grid), but high energy (a.k.a the energy they do take is concentrated so intensely into a “bullet” of light, they can create astronomically hot temperatures).
Vulcan is a petawatt (1015) laser. It is used for experiments researching fusion energy, particle acceleration, and plasma physics such as astrophysics. In Roman Mythology, Vulcan is the god of fire, volcanoes, metalworking and the forge. No better personification could have been used for a laser as powerful as Vulcan.