Scientists Build "Anti-Laser" Device
The BBC reports:
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.
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