Laserati

Two published poor man's lasers:

1. Poor man’s source for sub 7 fs: a simple route to ultrashort laser pulses and their full characterization.
2. Poor Man's Channel Waveguide Laser: KY(WO4)2:Yb.

Dr. Rüdiger Paschotta, who runs a consulting company after a successful academic career, just published another book: SPIE Field Guide to Laser Pulse Generation. His first book is SPIE Field Guide to Lasers.

Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology, his notable and useful web project, also has a print version now.

He leads a very interesting career.

To me, 2007 is not an exciting year for laser research itself. Maybe, there are great breakthroughs, I am just not aware of, that's why I put a question mark on the title.

But this year I did read a lot of interesting research stories that use lasers as tool. Physics News Update listed top ten Physics stories of the year. One of them is on laser, and three of them use lasers.

A personal blog from Yan Feng, sometimes covers topics on lasers.