Wired
[quote]Less than a year after it was first suggested, the world’s first antilaser is here. A team of physicists have built a contraption that, instead of flashing bright beams, utterly extinguishes specific wavelengths of light.
Conventional lasers create intense beams of light by stimulating atoms to spit out a coherent beam of light in which all the light waves march in lockstep. The crests of one wave match the crests of all the others, and troughs match up with troughs.
The antilaser does the reverse: Two perfect beams of laser light go in, and are completely absorbed.
“There will be nothing coming out again,â€
Physicists Build World’s First Antilaser
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frigidmagi
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#1 Physicists Build World’s First Antilaser
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#3
WRT electricity, wouldn't using be the power that went into the laser to begin with for something else instead be a far easier way to achieve that?
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'Go ahead. Bake my quiche'.
'Undead or alive, you're coming with me.'
'Detritus?'-'Yessir?'-'Never go to Klatch'.-'Yessir.'
'Many fine old manuscripts in that place, I believe. Without price, I'm told.'-'Yes, sir. Certainly worthless, sir.'-'Is it possible you misunderstood what I just said, Commander?'
'Can't sing, can't dance, can handle a sword a little'
'Run away, and live to run away another day'-The Rincewind principle
'Hello, inner child. I'm the inner babysitter.'
#4
To achieve what? Transmitting electricity? Yes, you're right that lasers are generally crap at efficiency, but that isn't always the point.
For example, let's say someone creates a fully functional photonic processor. This new technology can be used to create a more efficient receiver.
Meanwhile, the fact that the laser beams can cross pathways without interfering with each other means that you can make some very complicated circuits that right now are basically impossible. Potentially even more complicated now since you could take the "wave/nowave" state as a potential new way to handle processes.
It could potentially have other applications as well with regards to any sort of light, not just lasers. It may, for example, increase efficiency in solar panels, creating much more utility for the technology. This is, after all, a fancy way of exploiting a basic nature of wave mechanics, it's most easily shown using a laser, but it could be applied by any photon that interacts with the material.
It may even be a way to male lasers more energy efficient, converting the wasted photons that don't line up with the half-mirror back into electricity.
For example, let's say someone creates a fully functional photonic processor. This new technology can be used to create a more efficient receiver.
Meanwhile, the fact that the laser beams can cross pathways without interfering with each other means that you can make some very complicated circuits that right now are basically impossible. Potentially even more complicated now since you could take the "wave/nowave" state as a potential new way to handle processes.
It could potentially have other applications as well with regards to any sort of light, not just lasers. It may, for example, increase efficiency in solar panels, creating much more utility for the technology. This is, after all, a fancy way of exploiting a basic nature of wave mechanics, it's most easily shown using a laser, but it could be applied by any photon that interacts with the material.
It may even be a way to male lasers more energy efficient, converting the wasted photons that don't line up with the half-mirror back into electricity.