When people hear the word “laser”, their minds may well turn to laser pointers or lightsabres such as those used by Darth Vader and the Jedi Knights in
Star Wars
. But the laser produced by ETH spin-off Menhir Photonics is not about producing spectacular lighting effects. From the outside, it is nothing more than a nice-looking, small blue box with a silver casing.
This laser apparatus is every bit as robust as it looks: it will continue to generate laser beams even when hit with a hammer – it operates with the precision and reliability of a Swiss timepiece and remains as sturdy as a Gallic standing stone (menhir) in the process.
Precise and reliable, sturdy and robust – for Florian Emaury, CEO of Menhir Photonics and one of the three founders of the company, these are the key characteristics of this laser device: “Even shaking or hitting our lasers has no impact on their performance.”
At the forefront of laser technology
Florian Emaury adds that market research has shown that there is a demand for turnkey and compact lasers of this kind in industry – and indeed in diverse fields of application.
In addition to scientific use in research laboratories, these lasers are also suitable for industrial applications in synchronisation electronics, microwave generation and telecommunications, as well as in harsh environments such as those in aviation and space flight, as they can withstand a wide range of pressure conditions and vibrations.
Menhir Photonics’ lasers are not only robust and reliable, but also ultrafast – and produce a beam of very pure light. This all-in-one blue “box” contains what is known as a pulsed laser, which generates a tightly focused, high-intensity laser beam by emitting individual laser pulses in extremely fast succession.
With that in mind, Menhir Photonics relies on ultrashort pulses lasting just a few hundreds of femtoseconds. For comparison, 1 femtosecond is equal to 0.000 000 000 000 001 seconds – a blink of the eye lasts 1 second. The overall effect is that this femtosecond laser generates a highly pure laser light with barely any variation in intensity – “low noise”, as physicists say.
From the small system to the big market
Florian has a clear business strategy for Menhir Photonics’ lasers: “Photonics is an enabler technology, and we develop lasers intended to be integrated into complete industrial systems.”
In other words, the lasers from Menhir Photonics are not a definitive solution in and of themselves; rather, they are core components in the development of more global systems, such as complex particle accelerators or timing and synchronisation for satellites.
Precisely because they operate very reliably, the Menhir Photonics’ lasers can be used, for example, as reference clocks in accelerator systems. Their stability and high precision (they can be seen as a very precise “photonics metronome”), make them suitable for any applications requiring extreme accuracy, like GPS or telecommunications.
