The article traces the discovery and development of lasers, focusing on the work of Jan Hall at NIST in the early 1960s. Hall built on Einstein’s theory of stimulated emission to create stable, continuous-wave lasers using helium and neon gases. These lasers enabled precise measurements of tiny changes in the environment, such as gravitational tides and underground nuclear tests. Hall’s work contributed to establishing a new definition of the meter based on atomic transitions, laying the foundation for modern metrology and quantum technologies.
Source: https://www.nist.gov/nist-and-nobel/jan-hall/context-discovery-jan-hall
Keywords: Stimulated Emission, Laser Technology, Precision Measurement, Atomic Clocks, Frequency Control
