Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The laser works by the same principle as the maser, but produces higher-frequency coherent radiation at visible wavelengths. The maser was the precursor to the laser, inspiring theoretical work by Townes and Arthur Leonard Schawlow that led to the invention of the laser in 1960 by Theodore Maiman. When the coherent optical oscillator was first ...
Charles Hard Townes (July 28, 1915 – January 27, 2015) was an American physicist. [4] [5] Townes worked on the theory and application of the maser, for which he obtained the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics associated with both maser and laser devices.
In 1956, Gould proposed using optical pumping to excite a maser, and discussed this idea with the maser's inventor Charles Townes, who was also a professor at Columbia and later won the 1964 Nobel prize for his work on the maser and the laser. [9] Townes gave Gould advice on how to obtain a patent on his innovation, and agreed to act as a witness.
The terms laser and maser are also used for naturally occurring coherent emissions, as in astrophysical maser and atom laser. [18] [19] A laser that produces light by itself is technically an optical oscillator rather than an optical amplifier as suggested by the acronym. [20]
Maiman had begun conceptualizing a solid-state laser design even before he undertook the maser project at Hughes. [ 5 ] : 45 [ 14 ] : 59 Moving the microwave frequency of masers up the electromagnetic spectrum 50,000-fold to the frequency of light would require finding a feasible lasing medium and excitation source and designing the system.
The brightness temperature of a maser is the temperature a black body would have if producing the same emission brightness at the wavelength of the maser. That is, if an object had a temperature of about 10 9 K it would produce as much 1665-MHz radiation as a strong interstellar OH maser.
A gravity laser, also sometimes referred to as a Gaser, Graser, or Glaser, is a hypothetical device for stimulated emission of coherent gravitational radiation or gravitons, much in the same way that a standard laser produces coherent electromagnetic radiation.
The ruby laser was the first laser to be made functional. Built by Theodore Maiman in 1960, the device was created out of the concept of an "optical maser," a maser that could operate in the visual or infrared regions of the spectrum.