  I propose to use laser heating both for the substrate and the thermal
evaporation sources in a vacuum chamber operating at pressures from XHV to
values where the mean free path of the particles approaches or slightly exceeds
the source-substrate distance. The concept combines the advantages of the
molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and pulsed laser deposition (PLD) methods to allow
ultrapure deposition with continuous stoichiometry variation at high background
pressures of arbitrary gases or molecular beams. Theory and preliminary
experiments suggest that this setup is capable of growing complex oxides such
as SrTiO$_3$ in the adsorption-controlled regime, similar to GaAs, in a
background of molecular oxygen. This regime is neither accessible to MBE nor to
PLD, making this laser epitaxy approach a unique tool to explore new growth
regimes with the potential to fabricate structures such as modulation-doped
heterostructures with low levels of background impurities that are impossible
to synthesize with the current techniques. The technological simplicity and
exceedingly compact size of the deposition chamber enable easy and rapid
switching between different materials systems and the efficient synthesis of
new materials that involve corrosive constituents. In contrast to PLD, the
method may be scaled in a straightforward manner to large substrate sizes,
providing a direct path from research to mass production.
