Introduction to general relativity this energy loss would be too small to be detectable, but this energy loss was observed in 1974 in a binary pulsar called PSR1913+16. In such a system, one of the orbiting stars is a pulsar. This has two consequences: a pulsar is an extremely dense object known as a neutron star, for which gravitational wave emission is much stronger than for ordinary stars. Also, a pulsar emits a narrow beam of electromagnetic radiation from its magnetic poles. As the pulsar rotates, its beam sweeps over the Earth, where it is seen as a regular series of radio pulses, just
Laser beam profiler field, i.e., in a distance from the beam waist which is much larger than the Rayleigh length. This definition yields a divergence half-angle. (Sometimes, full angles are used in the literature; these are twice as large.) For a diffraction-limited Gaussian beam, the beam divergence is λ/(πw), where λ is the wavelength (in the medium) and w the beam radius (radius with 1/e intensity) at the beam waist. A large beam divergence for a given beam radius corresponds to poor beam quality. A low beam divergence can be important for applications such as pointing or free-space optical communications. Beams with very