September2009, Intel announced of its Light Peak optical fiber technology for lasers toenter household PCs. Light Peak contains vertical-cavity surface-emittinglasers (VCSELs) and can send and receive 10 billion bits of data per second. Thepeak power of the laser light is about 500 times that used by the US at anygiven time.
In March 31, 2010, a single-atom laser with and without thresholdbehavior is demonstrated by Rainer Blatt and Piet O. Schmidt and their team atthe University of Innsbruck in Austria by tuning the strength of atom/lightfield coupling. In May2009, University of Rochester, New York, Chunlei Guo, a research announces anew process that uses femtosecond laser pulses to make regular incandescentlightbulbs superefficient. The surface of the metal form nanostructures thatmake the tungsten become far more effective at radiating light by using thelaser pulse trained on the bulb’s filament. Guo says that this process can makea 100-W bulb use less electric than a 60-W bulb.
Also in May 2009, The NationalIgnition Facility (NIF), the largest and highest-energy laser in theworld, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is used. In June of 2009, NASAlaunches the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). It will use laser to obtaindata for people to draw a 3-D maps. The map could assist them to determinelunar ice locations and safe landing sites for future spacecraft. InSeptember 2006, first electrically powered hybrid silicon laser using standardsilicon manufacturing processes is built and announced by John Bowers andcolleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Mario Paniccia,director of Intel Corp.’s Photonics Technology Lab. This silicon laser could lowerthe cost of normal laser.
In August 2007, a new way to integrate optical andelectronic functions on a single chip is made by Bowers and his doctoralstudent Brian Koch. They built first mode-locked silicon evanescent laser, thatenable new types of integrated circuits. In November1996, WolfgangKetterle demonstrated the first pulsed atom laser, which uses matter instead oflight at MIT.
In January 1997, the development of a gallium-nitride (GaN)laser was announced by Shuji Nakamura, Steven P. DenBaars and James S. Speck atthe University of California. The laser emits brightblue-violet light in pulsedoperation. In September 2003, the first laser-powered aircraft is successfullymade by a team of researchers from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center inHuntsville. An invisible ground-based laser that tracks the aircraft in flightand deliver the power to the aircraft, directing its energy beam at speciallydesigned photovoltaic cells carried onboard to power the plane’s propeller.
In2004, Ozdal Boyraz and Bahram Jalali of the University of California demonstratedthe Electronic switching in a Raman laser. It is the first silicon Raman laserthat works at room temperature with 2.5-W peak output power. It can be directlymodulated to transmit data unlike traditional Raman lasers. Inyear 1985, laser light is used to slow and manipulate atoms by Bell Labs’Steven Chu and his colleagues. They used optical molasses (laser coolingtechnique) to investigate the behavior of atoms, providing an insight intoquantum mechanics. Chu, Claude N.
Cohen-Tannoudji and William D. Phillips win aNobel Prize for this work in 1997. In the year 1987, erbium-doped fiberamplifiers is introduced by David Payne at the University of Southampton in theUK and his team. The amplifiers boost light signals without first having toconvert them into electrical signals and then back into light. This reduced thecost of long distance fiber optic systems. In year 1988, Gould begins receivingroyalties from his patents. In 1994, Jérôme Faist, Federico Capasso, Deborah L.
Sivco, Carlo Sirtori, Albert L. Hutchinson and Alfred Y. Cho made the quantumcascade (QC) laser, a semiconductor laser that can simultaneously emit light atmultiple widely separated at Bell Labs. The entire structure of the laser ismanufactured a layer of atoms at a time by the crystal growth technique calledmolecular beam epitaxy. The laser’s wavelength can by simply changed bychanging the thickness of the semiconductor layers. The QC laser is good forremote sensing of gases in the atmosphere because of its room-temperatureoperation and power and tuning ranges. The first demonstration of a quantum dotlaser with high threshold density is reported in year 1994 by Nikolai N.
Ledentsov of A.F. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute. Thefirst commercial installation of a Bell Labs fiber optic lightwavecommunications system is completed under the streets of Chicago in year 1977. Oct.11 of that same year, Gould is issued a patent for optical pumping, and thenused in about 80% of lasers.In year 1978, the LaserDisc hits the home videomarket with little impact.
The earliest players use HeNe laser tubes to readthe media, while later players use infrared laser diodes. Gould receives apatent covering a broad range of laser applications.In year 1981, ProfessorArthur Schawlow and Bloembergen receive the Nobel Prize in physics for theircontributions to the development of laser spectroscopy.
Peter F. Moulton ofMIT’s Lincoln Laboratory develops the titanium-sapphire laser in year 1982. Itis used to generate short pulses in the picosecond and femtosecond ranges.
Thetitanium-sapphire laser replaces the dye laser for tunable and ultrafast laserapplications. In October of that year, Billy Joel album “52ndStreet” is the first album released on CD (LaserDisc) In theyear 1975, Laser Diode Labs Inc.’s engineers in Metuchen, N.J. develop thefirst commercial continuous-wave semiconductor laser operating at roomtemperature. It enables transmission of telephone conversations.
In that year, JanP. Van der Ziel, R. Dingle, Robert C. Miller, William Wiegmann and W.A.Nordland Jr. made the first quantum-well laser operation.
First demonstration ofa semiconductor laser operating continuously at room temperature at awavelength beyond one ?m, the forerunner of sources for long-wavelengthlightwave systems is in year 1976. Also in that year, thefirst free-electron laser (FEL) is demonstrated by John M.J. Madey and hisgroup at Stanford University in California. FELs use a beam of electrons thatare accelerated to near light speed, then passed through a periodic transversemagnetic field to produce coherent radiation.
Because the lasing mediumconsists only of electrons in a vacuum, FELs do not have the material damage orthermal lensing problems that plague ordinary lasers and can achieve very highpeak powers. In1970, Gould used $1 plus 10 percent of future profits to get back his patentrights. In that year, the excimer laser also is invented by Basov, V.A.Danilychev and Yu. M. Popov develop at P.
N. Lebedev Physical Institute. In thespring of 1970, the first continuous-wave room-temperaturesemiconductor lasers is made by Alferov’s group at Ioffe Physico-TechnicalInstitute and Mort Panish and Izuo Hayashi. In that same year, Drs.
Robert D.Maurer, Peter C. Schultz and Donald B. Keck demonstrated the feasibilityof fiber optics for telecommunications with the first optical fiber with lossbelow 20dB/km. Arthur Ashkin also invents optical trapping in that same year.Optical trapping is the process by which atoms are trapped by laser light.
Hiswork pioneers the field of optical tweezing and trapping and leads tosignificant advances in physics and biology. The first semiconductor laser thatoperates continuously at room temperature are made by Izuo Hayashi and MortonB. Panish of Bell Labs in year 1971. In 1972, Charles H. Henry invents thequantum well laser, which requires much less current than conventional diodelasers, which is more efficient. Holonyak and students at the University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign first demonstrate the quantum well laser in 1977. Alaser beam is also be used to form electronic circuit patterns on ceramic.
In1966, Charles K. at Standard Telecommunication Laboratories in Harlow, UK, havea breakthrough in fiber optics. He discover and calculates how to transmitlight over long distances via optical glass fibers. It would be possible totransmit light signals over a distance of 100 km deciding that with fiber ofpurest glass compared with only 20 m for the fibers available in the 1960s. Kaoreceives a 2009 Nobel Prize in physics for his work.In that particular year, aFrench physicist Alfred Kastler wins the Nobel Prize in physics for his techniqueknown as optical pumping.
It is a method of stimulating atoms to higher energystates. It was an important step toward the creation of the maser and thelaser. In March 1967, the tunable dye laser is made by Bernard Sofferand Bill McFarland at Korad Corp. in Santa Monica, Calif. In February 1968 California,Maiman and other laser originate found the laser advocacy group Laser IndustryAssociation. In1965, two lasers are phase-locked for the first time at Bell Labs. It is animportant step toward optical communications.
In that year,the first chemicallaser, a 3.7-?m hydrogen chloride instrument was demonstrated by Jerome V.V.Kasper and George C.
Pimentel at the University of California, Berkeley. InMarch 1964, William B. Bridges of Hughes Research Labs discover pulsedargon-ion laser which could produce output at several visible and UVwavelengths,after two years of working on HeNe lasers and xenon lasers.
In thatsame year, Townes, Basov and Prokhorov are awarded the Nobel Prize in physicsfor their “fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which has ledto the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on themaser-laser-principle”. After that, Kumar Patel made the carbon dioxide laserat Bell Labs. At that time, it is the most powerful operating laser, but it isnow used worldwide as a cutting tool in surgery and industry.The Nd:YAG(neodymium-doped YAG) laser is also invented in that year by Joseph E. Geusic andRichard G. Smith. The laser later proves ideal for cosmetic applications, suchas laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis (lasik) vision correction and skinresurfacing.
InJune 1962, the first yttrium aluminium garnet (YAG) laser is reported by BellLabs. In early 1963: $1million is estimated for the annual sales for the commercial of lasers by Barron’smagazine. In that same year, the first demonstration of a mode-locked laser;i.e.
, a helium-neon laser with an acousto-optic modulator was reported by LoganE. Hargrove, Richard L. Fork and M.A.
Pollack. Mode locking is fundamental forlaser communication and is the basis for femtosecond lasers.In that year, HerbertKroemer of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the team of RudolfKazarinov and Zhores Alferov of A.
F. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in St.Petersburg, Russia, also independently suggest the ideas to build semiconductorlasers from heterostructure devices. The work made Kroemer and Alferov winningthe 2000 Nobel Prize in physics. InOctober 1961, the first operation of a neodymium glass (Nd:glass) laser isreported by American Optical Co.’s Elias Snitzer. The first medical treatmenton a human patient by using laser is on December 1961 at Columbia-PresbyterianHospital in Manhattan.
It is performed by Dr. Charles J Campbell of theInstitute of Ophthalmology at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center and CharlesJ. Koester of the American Optical Co. The American Optical ruby laser was usedto destroy retinal tumor.
In 1962, Hellwarth proves his laser theory bygenerating peak powers 100 times that of ordinary ruby lasers by usingelectrically switched Kerr cell shutters. The giant pulse formation techniqueis then called Q-switching. Its first application is the welding of springs forwatches. In 1962,a gallium-arsenide laser which is a semiconductor device thatconverts electrical energy directly into infrared light is develop by groups atGE, IBM and MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. But the device must be cryogenicallycooled. In October 1962, a scientist at a General Electric Co. lab, named Nick HolonyakJr.
, released his work about the”visible red” GaAsP (gallium arsenide phosphide) laser diode which is fortoday’s red LEDs used in CDs, DVD players and mobile phones. In May16, 1960, Theodore H. Maiman constructs the first laser at Hughes ResearchLaboratories in Malibu, Calif. He uses a cylinder of synthetic ruby measuring 1cm in diameter and 2 cm long, with the ends silver-coated to make themreflective and able to serve as a Fabry-Perot resonator. He uses photographicflashlamps as the laser’s pump source.
Mainman’s accomplishment were announcedin July 7, 1960. In November 1960, the uranium laser, is shown byPeter P. Sorokin and Mirek J. Stevenson of the IBM Thomas J. Watson ResearchCenter. In December 1960, Ali Javan, William Bennett Jr.
and Donald Herriott ofBell Labs develop the helium-neon (HeNe) laser, the first to generate acontinuous beam of light at 1.15 ?m. In 1961, Lasers started to appear oncommercial market through Trion Instruments Inc., Perkin-Elmer andSpectra-Physics. The second International Quantum Electronicsmeeting in March 1961, Robert W. Hellwarth suggest that a vivid enhancement inthe ruby laser can be achieve by making the laser’s pulse more predictable andcontrollable.In1955 Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, Nikolai G.
Basov and Alexander M.Prokhorov try to make oscillators. Pumping method is introduce which involvethe production of a negative absorption. In 1956, Nicolaas Bloembergen inventedthe microwave solid-state maser. Nov. 13, 1957, the first use of acronym laseris by Gordon Gould, a graduate student from Columbia University.
He notarizeshis idea in a candy store in Bronx. He then joined a private research companyTRG (Technical Research Group). In 1958, Townes and Arthur L. Schawlow displaythat maser could be made to work in the optical and infrared regions and implyhow it can be completed.
Basov and Prokhorov also are exploring thepossibilities of applying maser principles in the optical region.In April 1959,Gould and TRG apply for laser-related patents stemming from Gould’s ideas butlater their application is denied in March 22, 1960 and the patent is grantedto Townes and Schawlow. Then Gould and TRG launch what would become a 30-yearpatent dispute related to laser invention. In1900, Max Planck published his most important work about the relation of energyand the frequency of radiation. He says that energy can be emit or absorb onlyin discrete chunk.
His theory made a turning point in physics and inspiredAlbert Einstein. In 1905, Albert Einstein proposed that light also delivers itsenergy in chunks