SCIENTISTS BUILD THE WORLD’S FIRST ANTI-LASER

    Scientists build the world's first anti-laser Traditional lasers rely on gain mediums to produce beams of coherent light Continue reading the main story Physicists have built the world's first device that can cancel out a laser beam – a so-called anti-laser.

    The device, created by a team from Yale University, is capable of absorbing an incoming laser beam entirely. But this is not intended as a defence against high-power laser weapons, the researchers said. Instead they think it could be used in next-generation supercomputers which will be built with components that use light rather than electrons. Professor Douglas Stone and colleagues at Yale University had initially been developing a theory to explain which materials could be used as the basis of lasers. Strange lasers Recent advances in laser design have resulted in a number of unusual devices that do not fit the traditional concept of a laser, Professor Stone explained. "So we were working on a theory that could predict what could be used to form a laser," he said. That theory also predicted that instead of amplifying light into coherent pulses, as a laser does, it should be possible to create a device that absorbs laser light hitting it, said Professor Stone – an anti-laser. They have now succeeded in building one.

    Continue reading the main story What is a laser? A laser is a device that can produce a beam of coherent light The beam is produced using a quantum effect, whereby electrons can be made to emit light That is achieved by stimulating electrons inside a gain medium, typically using an electric current Resonators are used to amplify the light produced to form the intense beam Their device focuses two lasers beams of a specific frequency into a specially designed optical cavity made from silicon, which traps the incoming beams of light and forces them to bounce around until all their energy is dissipated. In a paper published in the journal Science they demonstrated that the anti-laser could adsorb 99.4 per cent of incoming light, for a specific wavelength.

    Light speed Altering the wavelength of the incoming light means that the anti-laser can effectively be turned on and off – and that could be used in optical switches, Professor Stone told BBC News. The anti-laser could turn out to be more useful in computing than weapon defence Building something which can absorb light over a wide range of wavelengths is pretty simple, said Professor Stone, but only doing so for a particular wavelength makes the anti-laser potentially useful in optical computing. The anti-laser's big advantage is that it is built using silicon, which is already widely used in computing. It would not, however, be much use as a laser shield, according to Professor Stone. "The energy gets dissipated as heat. So if someone sets a laser on you with enough power to fry you, the anti-laser won't stop you from frying," he said. The project demonstrated the technology leader and innovative the WSS product of our company. Product Description: WSS ROADM (Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop Multiplexer) and OXC (optical cross connects) all-optical network node key modules, it is mainly used in the all-optical network protection switching, real-time monitoring, testing and optical fiber communication devices MAN and access network plug / min multiplexing and switching equipment. MEMS-based WSS has a frequency bandwidth, low dispersion, the structure is simple, flexible port assignments, extended wavelength and direction better scalability, all-optical network core technology products.