Benefits of Lasers in Real World Applications

Laser technology helps save lives, map the human genome, and accurately measure the distance between the earth and the moon.
Lasers have evolved from modern marvels to a staple of modern life with laser based levels and laser pointers becoming commonplace.
The benefits of laser technology are well known and widely used. Lasers produce a beam of light that is monochromatic, coherent, small and straight. More simply put, lasers generate a single color or wavelength. Most common laser based products use a small laser that emits red light. This works well for many applications like laser levels, bar code scanners, and conventional DVD players.
It is laser technology that has made possible jumps in storage capacity from vinyl to CD to currently available DVDs. CD’s introduced digital music and video reproduction to replace noisy, fragile and low capacity analog recordings. Developments in laser technology will continue to enable leaps in storage capacity. Recent announcements reveal that to make next generation DVDs hold even more data, manufacturers use a shorter wavelength provided by a blue laser.
NEW LASERS LEAD TO NEW OPPORTUNITIES
Laser technology also offers advantages for generating images. Lasers are smaller and brighter than alternative light sources. Light from most sources spreads out as it travels so that much less of it hits a given area as it moves farther from its source. Laser light doesn’t behave this way. The beam can be directed or scanned with precision and can even be “pixel” sized.
Three primary colors, (red, green, blue) are used to generate the full-color images we commonly see in televisions, computers, and video displays. Red lasers are established and widely available in commercial products today; blue and green lasers are coming shortly. Developments in these compact blue and green lasers will enable a new generation of products capable of generating full color images.
Laser technology can generate bright full color images from a battery powered micro-sized device. This is why Microvision chose laser light sources for the ultra-miniature PicoP™ display engine.
The PicoP enables manufacturers of hand-held devices to create next generation products that provide consumers with the ability to project full color, high resolution images from their mobile phones, laptop computers, personal media players, and other portable devices.

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