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RE: Laser Locking For Ultra-High Precision Light.... Pound-Drever-Hall Laser Locking Method..... In Depth!

in #steemstem7 years ago

I agree. It is amazing to see how new technology allows us to get really close to "exact" experimental procedures. My physics professor in university tells us that we can never make exact measurements; there is always some margin of error, be it human/experimental or random/circumstancial. It is important to do everything possible to make sure our measurements are as accurate as possible, although it can never reach exactitud.

Like we can make the value of 1/x go extremely tiny but it will never reach 0. Amazing.

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Exactly! Spot on! When making using light there is a limit called the "shot noise limit". It's basically the limit we can reach of reducing the noise in the measurements. The light when detected when making measurement arrives at the detector in a "pitter patter" rather than a smooth continuous sinusoidal fashion. There are techniques to reduced this noise, we must "squeeze" the light, this puts more uncertainty in the amplitude but increases precision for the phase, or vice verse. However the Heisenberg uncertainty principle will always be there making everything in life uncertain hahaha.