Lasers are an inextricable part of semiconductor technology and these special beams are used in a range of applications — from welding and cutting metal to reading compact discs and scanning barcodes. But a long-standing problem with lasers is that being products of light, they have inherent instabilities which make them ‘incoherent’. The relative degree of this incoherence is called laser chaos and, often, users must choose between a powerful semiconductor laser with poor output quality or a coherent, but much weaker, laser. The instabilities in the laser are caused by optical filaments — light structures that move randomly and change with time causing chaos. By overcoming laser chaos, scientists can create ultra-bright 3D laser cinemas, or have them as elements in extremely bright laser systems used in nuclear fusion reactors. There could be a solution. In a paper in Science , an international research team has described how has been able to prevent laser filaments using a technique called ‘quantum chaos’.
Published - August 19, 2018 12:02 am IST
