30 October 2013

ANU's got a laser tripod

| johnboy
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The Australian National University has the intriguing news that they’ve taken to levitating mirrors like milking stools on three legged lasers:

Physicists from The Australian National University have shown that three lasers are better than one when it comes to levitating small but visible objects on light, designing an extremely precise sensor by floating a mirror on a tripod of lasers.

“Levitation itself is not new,” says Professor Ping Koy Lam from the ANU Department of Quantum Science. “But our ability to measure gravitational force using a levitating mirror as a sensor is new.”

Professor Lam and his team have shown it is possible to stably suspend a mirror using three laser beams and collect the reflected light.

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