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    • Eric J. Lerner

    Contributing Editor, Laser Focus World

    Eric J. Lerner is a contributing editor for Laser Focus World.

    FIGURE 1. The GLAS laser altimeter includes three laser boxes (yellow), a 1-m-diameter mirror with shroud, heat pipe (red) and side radatiors (top), as well as a star tracker (pink), electronics boxes, and a small telescope (grey) for the stellar reference system (bottom). GLAS's 1-m telescope focuses light from a Nd:YAG laser into a beam that is 70 m wide when it bounces off ice, land, sea, and clouds below. The time of return of the 5-ns-long pulses provide 1-cm accuracy in measurements of ice-cap thickness.
    Test & Measurement

    Lasers probe global climate from space

    Eric J. Lerner
    Oct. 1, 2002
    A laser altimeter is one of the most vital instruments in the study of global warming.
    A light-emitting diode array on the rear of this vehicle in a research project at California Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways takes data from the wheels and brakes and sends a signal to following cars indicating the acceleration and velocity of the vehicle.
    Lasers & Sources

    Giving vision to vehicles

    Eric J. Lerner
    Aug. 1, 2002
    Despite safety improvements, automobile crashes still kill more than 40,000 people a year in the United States, and ten times that many worldwide.
    FIGURE 1. The International Technology Roadmap of Semiconductors, the industry-wide plan for technological progress, outlines the goals for lithography as linewidths of ICs shrink.
    Optics

    Lasers light the way to ever-shrinking chips

    Eric J. Lerner
    July 1, 2002
    Krypton fluoride, argon fluoride, and fluorine lasers mark the steps toward smaller linewidths as lithography makes faster and more complex chips.