World’s Fastest Single-shot Laser Camera

March 14, 2023

Scientists from Germany and the US have built the world’s fastest single-shot laser camera – 1,000x faster than its predecessors at capturing extremely short-lived events.
They used the camera to provide the most precise view yet of how a hydrocarbon flame produces soot.
The device’s technique is called laser-sheet compressed ultrafast photography (LS-CUP) combining laser sheet imaging with compressed sensing on a standard streak camera system.
It “can resolve a plane of a three-dimensional object like a flame or spray or any turbid media and can “resolve physical or chemical processes” in space and time.
It can capture images at 5 billion frames per second (fps).
The device can also be used to photograph shockwaves in nuclear reactors, combustion of fine sprays, and an enigmatic process called sonoluminescence (sometimes, when excited by sound, bubbles in a liquid implode and release light at a temperature of ~10,000 K), all of which involve processes that happen in a few nanoseconds.
- However, the technology can be cost intensive.