Built: The World's First Anti-Laser
Thursday, February 17, 2011 - 17:30
in Physics & Chemistry
After 50 years, laser technology is still advancing. Scientists at Yale University have announced the world's first anti-laser, in which incoming beams of light interfere with one another in such a way as to perfectly cancel each other out, a breakthrough that sounds academic but could pave the way for new applications in optical computing and radiology. Conventional lasers, which were first invented in 1960, use a so-called "gain medium," usually a semiconductor like gallium arsenide, to produce a focused beam of coherent light—light waves with the same frequency and amplitude that are in step with one another. read more