Any Color You Like: NIST Scientists Create 'Any Wavelength' Lasers | Hacker News

NIST researchers reported a laser-making method that can generate selectable optical wavelengths, rather than being limited to fixed colors.

The advance could enable more flexible, chip-scale light sources that are cheaper and easier to tune.

Potential uses include fiber-optic communications, photonic and quantum computing, precision chemistry, and medical devices.

If the approach scales, it could relax a major photonics hardware constraint and open new scientific and industrial applications.