Laser Smaller Than The Size Of Its Light Waves Is Just 200nm Wide

When it comes to building the world's smallest, with nanoscale computing possible, engineers and scientists are grabbing every new opportunity to build something seemingly impossible. We have seen the #-Link-Snipped-# & #-Link-Snipped-#, the #-Link-Snipped-# and even the #-Link-Snipped-#. Next in line is the world's smallest ever & most powerful laser. This laser is about one-fifteenth the size of the light waves it produces and is just 200 nanometers wide. It works at colors of light used in telecommunications and at room temperature.



The concept came to light after a paper was published in Nature by Mercedeh Khajavikhan and colleagues at the electrical and computer engineering department of University of California-San Diego. Their aim was building an "ultimate nanolaser", one that is a scalable, low-threshold, efficient source of radiation that occupies a small volume on a chip.

These may not be the smallest lasers ever made, but the easy method of creation and their ability to work at room temperature make them a class apart. Most importantly, these lasers don’t require a high threshold for emitting light. Dr. Khajavikhan and his team used a much larger laser to put in all the energy in the tiny lasers and created a cylindrical co-axial arrangement to capture the energy.

The applications of this tiny lasers are in a lot of sectors such as optical communications and ultra-high resolution imaging. It may also find its applications in quantum electrodynamics.

Source: Threshold broken for tiny lasers - BBC News Image Credit: #-Link-Snipped-#