Laser beam powered optical transistor may lead to ultrafast light-based computers

October 1st, 2009 SYDNEY - Building super-fast computers has just become easier, thanks to a breakthrough that lets researchers grab hold of tiny components and probe their inner structure using only a beam of light. The discovery takes researchers a step closer to utilising semi-conductor nano-wires that will be key components of future integrated devices and circuits.

September 29th, 2009 WASHINGTON - If scientists have their way, then a "telescope" that can magnify time could soon dramatically increase the amount of data that can be sent through fibre optic cables, speeding up broadband internet and other long-distance communications. Though it isn't possible to speed up the flashes of light that stream through the global network of optical fibres at around 200 million metres per second, more information can be squeezed into each burst of light, according to Mark Foster at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, using what he and his colleague Alexander Gaeta call a "time telescope" fitted with "time lenses".

September 19th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Researchers in Australia have demonstrated the first laser built with diamonds that has comparable efficiency to lasers built with other materials. Richard Mildren of Macqaurie University in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia and Alexander Sabella of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation in Edinburgh, South Australia developed the device.

September 12th, 2009 LONDON - Soon, the Airborne Laser (ABL), built into a customized Boeing 747, is ready for flight tests, in which it will try to shoot a ballistic missile. According to a report in New Scientist, the US Department of Defense's Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has developed the ABL.

September 11th, 2009 SYDNEY - A new way of storing and 'echoing' pulses of light allows bursts of laser to work as a flexible optical memory and potentially assist in extending the range of quantum information systems. A team at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Quantum-Atom Optics has demonstrated how photon echoes can be used to create a quantum memory device - meaning that pulses of light can be captured, stored and then released on demand.

September 5th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists has developed a new laser technology that has made it possible to turn light into sound. Developed by scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory, US, the technology has the potential to expand and improve both Naval and commercial underwater acoustic applications, including undersea communications, navigation and acoustic imaging.

September 4th, 2009 BERLIN - In a new research work, a team of scientists has shown how optical atomic clocks in the future might become more compact and even portable, maybe even travel to space. The research was done by scientists from the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Braunschweig, Germany.

August 17th, 2009 LONDON - The world's smallest laser, contained in a silica sphere just 44 nanometres across, and about 10 times smaller than the wavelength of light, has been unveiled. According to a report in Nature News, the laser has been named as the 'spaser'.

August 12th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have developed a laser technique that, in combination with standard techniques, would help to find supernovas. To find a supernova, the new technique would have to search for one single atom of a certain isotope of hafnium on Earth, which would prove that a supernova once exploded near our solar system.

August 12th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have said that an experimental atomic clock based on ytterbium atoms is about four times more accurate than it was several years ago, giving it a precision comparable to that of the NIST-F1 cesium fountain clock, the civilian time standard of the US. NIST scientists evaluated the clock by measuring the natural frequency of ytterbium, carefully accounting for all possible deviations such as those caused by collisions between the atoms, and by using NIST-F1 as a "ruler" for comparison.

July 4th, 2009 LONDON - An optical transistor, successfully crafted from a single molecule, brings researchers a step closer to an optical computer, which would be much faster and more powerful than existing counterparts. Existing central processing units (CPUs) limit the performance of computers, for example, because they produce an enormous amount of heat.

June 16th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists has broken the light modulation speed record, that too twice, with a signal-processing modulation speed of 4.3 gigahertz, breaking the previous record of 1.7 gigahertz held by a light-emitting diode. The team, comprising of researchers at the University of Illinois and at U.

May 30th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Optics researchers at the University of Rochester, US, have developed an ultra-powerful laser can turn regular incandescent light bulbs into power-sippers. The process could make a light as bright as a 100-watt bulb consume less electricity than a 60-watt bulb while remaining far cheaper and radiating a more pleasant light than a fluorescent bulb can.

May 30th, 2009 WASHINGTON - An ultra-powerful laser not only doubles the brightness of light bulbs filaments but also slashes their power consumption, according to a new study. "We've been experimenting with the way ultra-fast lasers change metals, and we wondered what would happen if we trained the laser on a filament," said Chunlei Guo, associate professor of optics at the University of Rochester, who led the research.

April 1st, 2009 LONDON - A US based company has developed a battlefield laser weapon that can fire a strong beam, which can destroy rockets, mortars and artillery shells. "We're doing our part to make gunpowder a 20th-century technology," said Dan Wildt of Northrop Grumman, whose battlefield laser weapon passed another milestone last week.