• Question: so far what is the name of the diamond that can give the most amount of power by shining a lasers on it

    Asked by yarl1n1 to Philip on 20 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Philip Dolan

      Philip Dolan answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Hey!
      We don’t actually really look for ‘power’ when we shine our laser light on a diamond. As odd as it sounds we shine laser light onto the diamond and look for a different colour of light to be given off (this is called photoluminesence). Often some special bits inside the diamond can give up to 1,000,000 photons per second off, but only about 4% of these photons are exactly the right colour for us. At the moment I’d be happy if I got 500,000 photons that are exactly the right colour (with a wavelength of 637nm), and I’m aiming to do this by trapping bit of the diamond that gives off the light in between two tiny, tiny curved mirrors (about the same size as a red blood cell). It’s very tricky though!

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