The invention of the LASER (an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) in 1960 came with no specific application in mind. Initially, some critics dubbed it “the solution in search of a problem.” It was only after the laser was invented that scientists and entrepreneurs found the laser’s real potential and created enormous amounts of applications spanning from technology used in everyday life to medical and defensive applications. At Central Washington University, an optically pumped molecular laser system is used to search for new sources of far-infrared radiation. The far-infrared region is loosely defined as light having wavelengths ranging from about 0.030 to 2.000 mm. With this experimental system, 71 far-infrared laser emissions were discovered using the methanol isotopologues 13CHD2OH, CH318OH, CHD2OH, and CH2DOH as the lasing medium. Additionally, several of these newly discovered laser emissions have been used to support the spectroscopic assignments of laser transitions previously proposed by other researchers. This presentation will outline the experimental system and method used in the search for new sources of far-infrared laser radiation along with a brief discussion of the experimental results and their role in performing spectroscopic assignments of molecular transitions.
For his work on this project, Mark McKnight was nominated for the SOURCE 2014 Scholar of the Year Award. The presentation also received a College of the Sciences Best Oral Presentation Award for 2014
