Before lasers, there were masers — the microwave siblings of optical lasers. But whereas lasers are used in many applications from telescopes to medicine, masers have long languished in the shadows, because they work only in super-cool temperatures or in a vacuum. Now, physicists have created a maser that works in regular conditions — using diamond.
Masers, which were conceived in the 1950s, and lasers, which followed in 1960, generate intense beams of highly ordered electromagnetic waves. Masers can be used to amplify tiny traces of radiation with little noise, making them useful for measuring weak signals in astronomy and for communicating with distant missions, such as NASA’s Voyager probes. But these applications usually require cryogenic cooling. In some cases, microwave devices could be more useful than a lasers because microwaves can pass through materials than optical light can’t.
The latest device, made by physicists at Imperial College London, can now produce a continuous maser beam in room-temperature conditions. The set-up involves shining a laser light through a diamond, sapphire and copper apparatus to create the microwave emission (see video).
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