Higher Bandwidth Scopes -- With Lasers

[LightlyDoped]

Interesting article about the use of lasers in scopes. They can measure frequency components of 125 THz:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/03/research-confirms-that-lasers-improve-everything-including-oscilloscopes/

[Harrkev]

This is a sampling scope, not a real-time scope.  Completely different animal.  You also do not want to know how much even a conventional sampling scope costs, even without the lasers.

Seems like cool tech to make an extremely short-duration A/D, though.  The down side is that, when you are going that fast, you probably cannot have too much coax cable length.  The article mentions a "very sharp tip in a vacuum."  I would imagine that this would make for a rather large probe.

[electr_peter]

Discussion on the same topic here: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/terahertz-oscilloscope-%28theoretical%29/msg623072/