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Asked by crazybritto to James, Marcus, Martin, Rob, Suzanne on 19 Mar 2012.
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Martin Zaltz Austwick answered on 19 Mar 2012:
My work has never combined lasers and magnets – although it is possible. I’ve done lasers and magnets, but never together!
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Robert Thompson answered on 19 Mar 2012:
When I was in Durham I did look at how a magnetic field would effect the way a laser passed through a material. It was pretty cool. The effect was that strong that the earths magnetic field effected it, so it could be used as a really big fancy compass if you wanted.
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Marcus Gallagher-Jones answered on 20 Mar 2012:
Yes acctually magnets are critical to the way my laser works. What happens is that a bunch of electrons are passed through a tunnel at around 99.999% the speed of light. They are periodically deflected from their path (up and down) by a series of electromagnets. At each point the electrons are deflected they give of energy in the form of light (in this case X-rays).
The up down motion caused by the magnets is tuned to match the wavelength of the emitted X-rays. Because of this they undergo a process called “constructive interference” basically meaning they are added together to make one more powerful X-ray. Because this occurs over a long distance you get one very powerful beam.
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Suzanne McEndoo answered on 21 Mar 2012:
Marcus, your laser sounds very cool!
In cold atom physics, we use MOTs, which are magneto-optical traps, so they combine magnets and laser light to trap atoms so we can play with them.
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