Article Abstracts | February 2007
The complete article appears in the February 2007 issue of Photonics Spectra. If you do not have a copy of this issue,
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Making Lasers from Dust
Random lasers provide a fascinating window into fundamental physics and promise many useful practical applications.
by Diederik S. Wiersma, European Laboratory for Non-linear Spectroscopy (LENS)
Anyone with optics experience knows that dust should be avoided as much as possible. It can contaminate optical surfaces, degrading performance and, sometimes — on the output facet of a diode laser, for example — cause disastrous optical damage. Although dust sometimes absorbs light, its chief sin is scattering light; that is, changing its propagation direction in a random fashion.
But it turns out that this same random scattering process — the nemesis of conventional lasers — can be harnessed to create a completely new type of laser, called a random laser. These unusual devices have drawn the interest of scientists recently, both because of their potential applications and because of the fascinating physics behind the random lasing process...
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