Gerard Meijer

An ordinary aluminum pot on a stove doesn't emit molecules you can catch with light. But if you take aluminum and an aluminum salt, heat them together in a small oven, you get a stream of aluminum fluoride molecules, like steam from a kettle's spout, except instead of water droplets, tiny particles fly out.

The infrared laser at the Fritz Haber Institute now works like a conductor with two batons. Previously, it produced a single beam in the mid-infrared range, where molecules vibrate.