Thanks for the great reply, would you know if masers are able to be focused more accurately than lasers? Even the very best optics will result in some pretty drastic divergence at great distance with lasers.
Thanks for the great reply, would you know if masers are able to be focused more accurately than lasers? Even the very best optics will result in some pretty drastic divergence at great distance with lasers.
Masers have even worse focusing resolution than optical systems due to their much longer wavelengths. Their divergence is far worse due to not only the issues with microwave waveguides having to be small, but the Skin Effect on the waveguide and scattering due to water vapor in the air make them a mess in a relatively short distance from their output aperture.
Lasers have their own problems with focusing due to the fact the the beam energy is in a Gaussian distribution rather than a homogenous cross section. The outer rays are weaker than the high energy density rays at the center of the beam, that is of course when taking about a transverse mode where there is only one beam cross section (TEM00). That's a big topic by itself so I'll leave it at that for now. Lenses actually focus laser light into more than one focal point due to this distribution and the aberration caused by spherical and meniscus lenses. As it turns out, focusing a laser is not really the best way to increase it's power. It's better to do some optical manipulation to bring the outer edges of Gaussian distribution towards the inside so the power density will be increased per the beam cross-sectional area. One day I'll crack that nut (maybe??), but it's a tough problem and lots of people are working towards it.
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