电子信息类专业英语（西电第二版）Unit 20 Different Types of Lasers.pptVIP

　　“Difficult” may be too mild a word. It reportedly took a small nuclear explosion to pump Livermore’s X-ray laser. Much of the energy from such an explosion is in the form of X-rays, and these X-rays excited atoms to produce an X-ray population inversion. The whole process happened very fast, probably in about one pica-second (10-12sec, or one trillionth of a second) or possibly even less, according to X-ray laser researchers outside Livermore. Aviation week said that during that ultra-short pulse, the laser produced a very high level of energy—hundreds of trillions of watts. Yet because the