Any Color You Like: NIST Scientists Create 'Any Wavelength' Lasers
geox
13 points
7 comments
April 16, 2026
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Discussion Highlights (4 comments)
cyanydeez
hopefully they get a license from Pantone
btreecat
I hope this has future applications in laser projectors
mycall
LaserCube [0] uses additive color mixing using three primary laser diodes (RGB) aligned using dichroic mirrors (which reflect specific wavelengths while allowing others to pass through) so that they exit the aperture as a single, combined beam. Alvanometer scanners tuned to 30,000 points per second is fast enough to trick the eyes. The complexity of the system would decrease with an anycolor laser. The only other attempt I have seen that is similar is Seb Lee-Delisle who created a project called "Laser Tempest," which involved hacking the original code of the 1981 Atari classic to run on a high-powered RGB (white light) laser projector. By bypassing the traditional CRT monitor and sending the vector data directly to the laser's galvanometers, he was able to project the game at a massive scale onto walls, buildings, and large screens at various technology and arts festivals. [0] https://www.laseros.com
adrian_b
Free research article: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08092 TLDR: This is not a new kind of laser. They have developed a method of growing on semiconductor wafers a kind of crystal with non-linear optical properties (Ta2O5, tantalum oxide, like in the tantalum electrolytic capacitors). With a non-linear crystal, there are many variants of transforming the color of a laser, e.g. by generating harmonics, by non-linear mixing light from lasers of different colors or by pumping with the laser a parametric oscillator that produces a different color from that of the laser. You may be able to produce almost any color, but not with a single device, and the energy efficiency of producing various colors can be very different. This is similar to how green laser pointers work. Because unlike for red or for blue, there are no good green semiconductor lasers, the green laser pointers have an infrared laser whose output is converted into green light by a non-linear crystal.