They said it couldn’t be done, but physicists at McGill University in Montreal have managed to amplify laser light with less energy and cooling than ever before, which means that fibre-optic communications, among other things, could get a whole lot cheaper.
From the press release:
McGill University researchers have successfully amplified light with so-called “colloidal quantum dots,” a technology that had been written off by many as a dead-end.
Over the last 15 years, repeated quantum dot research efforts failed to deliver on expected improvements in amplification, and many researchers started to believe that an unknown but insurmountable law of physics was blocking their path. Essentially, they said, quantum dots would simply never work well for one of their primary applications.
However, after extensive research, Professor Patanjali (Pat) Kambhampati and colleagues at McGill University’s Department of Chemistry determined that colloidal quantum dots do indeed amplify light as promised. […] Until now, the best available amplification technology was the quantum well, a thin sheet made of semi-conductor material which confines electrons to a one-dimensional plane, and consequently amplifies light. Colloidal quantum dots perform a similar function, but in a three-dimensional box-like structure instead of a flat sheet.
Image via Paprika Lab.
1 response so far ↓
1 Asher Vijay // Apr 5, 2009 at 1:38 pm
AW SWEET!
Also, go Patanjali, go McGill!
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