Ultra-fast strobe?

I am not sure where I should put this, but this seems to be the best place.

I want to buy, or build, an adjustable ultra-fast strobe light.

By ultra-fast, I mean capable of strobe frequencies in the neighborhood of 400 THz.

I want it to be minutely adjustable.
I also want to be able to adjust the on/off ratio.
For example, if I can set it to be on for 2 periods of time, then off for 1 period of time.

Light intensity is fairly inconsequential, (it doesn't have to be terribly bright) but I would like to be able to adjust the intesity if possible.
Intensity control is secondary, I could live without it, but I WOULD prefer it.

It can be a stand alone unit (such as a freq generator with a voltage output that I could affix an LED to in some manner).
It can be a computer controlled black box.
I could even dedicate a whole computer to it if necessary.
I could take one of my laptops and scavenge it if I have to.

Cost is not much of a concern, though I am not Bill Gates.

Any suggestions at all would be greatly appreciated.

 

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If no one replies to this (or I can't get a positive response) withion a week or so, would cross-posting be OK?

How long should I wait before I post this on a different forum (say General Science) trying to elicit a positive response?

 

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400THz !!! Are you sure ?!
I will look for it on the web, but... good luck !

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That is the kind fo responses I was fearing.

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Yes. 400 THz.

I have been looking too.
No luck so far.

I have heard mention of freq generators that reach into tens of THz, but that is not enough, and I am not even sure that a freq generator would be the right way to accomplish a strobe light.

 

I agree with kmguru. One question....why?

What is the reason for something with a frequency so high? Would it be possible to use multiple units with a lower frequency and have them out of sync, staggered? Ya know what I mean?

-AntonK

 

Hmmm.
I hasn't thought of that.
If all the sources could switch the same light source that could work.

I wonder if a diode could handle that frequency.

If not, what other options might I have for a light source?

 

I'm not sure a single light source could even handle that kind of frequency. I standard filament couldn't heat up and cool down that fast I don't think. Not too sure on the physics of an LED to know if it could or not.

Again though...you have me in suspense now. What's it for?

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-AntonK

 

If you have one or more suitcases of money, you can ask the guys of IBM research centers, they are pretty advanced in nano-optics...

 

Amazingly I have one sitting in front of me right now that I have stalled on building.. .
The strobe has an interior tube length of ~4cm, is filled with lp Xenon gas and is rated to produce a 4J flash in 1 microsecond. [RadioShack 272-1145 “LongLife Strobe Tube”] It has a maximum recommended flash frequency of 1/sec, and a lifetime of six million flashes. (MWatt on paper “sparked” my interest.)

Getting back to your problem, 400THz=4*10^14 cycles per second. If you were to try to capture that on 10mm film it would have to move at thirteen thousand times the speed of light to see it. Assuming the photographic chemicals could record that fast. (the human retina is even slower ruling out any mind-washing. Not that it doesn’t have any application; it does, Picosecond photography perhaps. Measuring chemical reactions as they happen. Here is a link:
http://www.weizmann.ac.il/~feyaron/yaron/attosecond.pdf

One can buy a picosecond laser diode system or If you really wanted to make it dirt cheap one would use a picosecond fluorescence of a compound and filter out the excitation pulse. If you spaced dye droplets 1ps apart in light distance (remember the speed of light in a medium) ~.87mm for Rutile glass you can set up a delayed pulse for a picosecond of time. Tiny droplets produce coherent pulses, however fluorescence is very week and you will have a very dim signal.

The computer interface circuitry is a completely different story but not unreasonable.