X-ray lasers generated from tabletop device

Laser-like X-ray beams can now be generated from a tabletop device. Most current X-ray lasers depend on facilities that are at least the size of football stadiums. Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder have created the tabletop device to make generating X-ray lasers more practical, paving the way for advances in the fields of medicine, biology and nanotechnology. The lasers provide super-high-resolution and targeted imaging. The research team used atoms in a gas to combine more than 5,000 low-energy laser photons to generate each high-energy  X-ray photon. “Because X-ray wavelengths are 1,000 times shorter than visible light and they penetrate materials, these coherent X-ray beams promise revolutionary new capabilities for understanding and controlling how the nanoworld works on its fundamental time and length scales,” Margaret Murnane, a co-leader of the research efforts, said.