Titanium-sapphire laser

These lasers are mainly used in scientific research because of their tunability and their ability to generate ultrashort pulses thanks to its broad light emission spectrum.

Lasers based on Ti:sapphire were first constructed and invented in June 1982 by Peter Moulton at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

The Ti:sapphire laser was invented by Peter Moulton in June 1982 at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in its continuous wave version.

[5] Strickland and Mourou, in addition to others, working at the University of Rochester, showed chirped pulse amplification of this laser within a few years,[6] for which these two shared in the 2018 Nobel Prize in physics[7] (along with Arthur Ashkin for optical tweezers).

Both the temporal and spectral properties of these lasers make them highly desirable for frequency metrology, spectroscopy, or for pumping nonlinear optical processes.

One half of the Nobel prize for physics in 2005 was awarded to the development of the optical frequency comb technique, which heavily relied on the Ti:sapphire laser and its self-modelocking properties.

[13] The reduced amplified spontaneous emission noise in the radiation of Ti:sapphire lasers lends great strength in their application as optical lattices for the operation of state-of-the-art atomic clocks.

When operated in the chirped pulse amplification mode, they can be used to generate extremely high peak powers in the terawatt range, which finds use in nuclear fusion research.