The Quantum Tunnel
Science and the World around Us
The “Anti-Laser”
This article first appeared in the March 2011 issue
of The Next Door Magazine
David S. Latchman
In the fifty years since the invention of the laser, it
is difficult to imagine our lives without them. These
popular and ubiquitous devices are seen and used on
an almost daily basis, from playing the movies and
games on our CD’s and DVDs to the bar-code scan-
ners at the super-market checkout aisle. Recently,
physicists at Yale University have come up a Time-
Reversed Laser, a device that is, in theory, a laser that
operates in reverse – an “anti-laser”, so to speak.
While the anti-laser is unlikely to have the impact or
visibility of its brother, it may make new devices and
applications possible, e.g new types of sensors and
switches for optical circuits.
In fact, laser are so popular they have been de-
scribed in science fiction long before they were in-
vented or the term even coined. In 1927, Russian
author, Aleksey Tolstoy described a death ray-laser
type of device in his novel, “The Hyperboloid of
Engineer Garin” (also known as “The Garin Death
Ray”), that was similar in principle to some of the
lasers in use today. Garin’s device amplified electro-
magnetic energy by using the curved geometry of a
hyperboloid to concentrate light onto a single point.
What is remarkable is that some modern day lasers
use this principle to focus light onto a gain medium
to power the lasing process. In reality, a hyperboloid
isn’t used but another type of curved surface called a
paraboloid.
The theoretical underpinnings for the laser was
first laid out by Albert Einstein in his 1917 paper Zur
Quantentheorie der Strahlung (On the Quantum The-
Newsletter Contents:
The “Anti-Laser” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Volume 1, Number 5, May, 10 2011
ory of Radiation) where the necessary conditions to
make a laser possible were derived. But it would still
take over 30 years before a device was built based
on his theories. The first device, a microwave ampli-
fier or MASER, was built by Charles Townes in 1953.
Townes would eventually continue his work and at-
tempts to build a device that operated in the visible
spectrum but the physical design to make such this
possible, as well as the term “laser”, would come
about from a Columbia University graduate student,
Gordon Gould.
Laser Physics
The term LASER is an acronym for the Light Am-
plification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
All lasers consist of a gain medium that is confined
within a resonant cavity. Energy, which could be in
the form of an electrical discharge or a flash of light,
is supplied to the gain medium, a special material
that allows light to be amplified. When this material
absorbs photons or particles of light, its electrons are
raised to a higher energy state, storing the photon’s
energy. At these “higher energy” states, electrons can
fall back to their original states and emit photons, a
process known as spontaneous emission. But there is
another form of emission that makes lasers possible.
If one of these excited atoms encounters a photon
of the correct energy, the raised electron may drop to
a lower energy state and emit a photon. This incom-
ing photon induces or stimulates this emission pro-
cess causing the emitted photon to travel in the same
direction as the incoming photon. In the process two
photons are emitted in a process known as stimulated
emission.
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E2
Incident
Photon
E1
(a) Photon is absorbed and electron raises(b) Electron falls and goes down an en-(c) Incoming photon “stimulates” the
an energy level ergy level. Photon is emitted
Figure 1: Different Types of Emission
To get a material to lase, the number of excited
atoms must be greater than the number of unexcited
atoms, a state known as population inversion. If the
amount of stimulated emission that takes place is
greater than the amount of light absorbed, we have
a light or optical amplifier. It was these conditions
and how they would take place that Einstein first
described in his 1917 paper. By placing the gain
medium in a highly reflective cavity, one with certain
dimensions to help the amplification process, as well
as allowing a means to supply energy or “pump” en-
ergy into the system a laser is constructed.
Pumping Energy
Mirror(Fully Reflecting)
Gain Medium Mirror(Partially Reflecting)
Figure 2: Schematic of Laser
The resonant or optical cavity is a hollow in
which the gain medium sits. In its simplest form, the
cavity consists of two mirrors arranged so that light
bounces back and forth as it passes through the gain
medium, amplifying the light’s energy each step of
the way. One of these mirrors is fully reflective while
the other partially so, allowing the laser beam to be
emitted through the partially silvered mirror.
What makes a laser’s beam different from other
sources of light is that it is coherent. With coher-
ent light, the light-waves are not only of the same
frequency but also move in phase; the crests and
troughs of the waves move in lockstep together
much in the way soldiers march in formation. In the
case of incoherent light, as in an incandescent light-
bulb or a fluorescent lamp, there is a jumble of dif-
ferent light-waves of different frequencies (or colors)
that don’t move in phase.
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Vol. 1, May, 10 2011
E2 E2
Emitted Incident
Photon Photon Emitted
Photons
E1 E1
emission of the second photon which
travels in the same direction as the first
photon
The Time-Reversed Laser
Just as there are materials that can be used to reflect
and amplify light within itself, there are those that
absorb it, a “lossy” medium so to speak. It is some-
what remarkable that in the fifty years since the cre-
ation of the first laser, no one considered what would
happen if this kind of medium was placed in the las-
ing cavity. At least until now. Yale physicist A.D.
Stone, along with his research group, asked that very
question and, in so doing, came up with a theoreti-
Laser Beam
cal description for such a device. While no material
is a perfect absorber the group’s calculations yielded
some interesting results, under certain conditions a
partially absorbing material can become a fully ab-
sorbing one.
Such a device can be built in very much the same
way as a laser, the gain medium is replaced by the
lossy one but instead of emitting a laser beam, it is il-
luminated by one. One can think of this as a laser
operating backwards in time or a “time-reversed”
laser. As the device is illuminated by a laser (a coher-
ent light source) and is made to absorb 100% of this
incident radiation thus becoming a perfect absorber
at that wavelength, the term “Coherent Perfect Ab-
sorber” or CPA has also been used. These two terms
were used by Stone and his group to describe this
new device.
As we have seen, absorption takes place at an
atomic level as incident radiation interacts with a
material to raise electron states. But in the case of a
CPA, its absorption doesn’t only occur at the atomic
level, there is an interplay between the medium’s
electronic structure and wave interference that oc-
curs inside the medium to completely trap any in-
cident coherent radiation inside. Thus even a poor
absorber can become a perfect one.
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(a) Coherent Light Source
Figure 3: Coherent and Incoherent Waveforms
Incoming
Laser Beam
Incoming
Laser Beams
Lossy Medium Lossy Medium
(a) Single Port CPA (b) Two Port CPA
Figure 4: Two Types of Coherent Perfect Absorbers
In its simplest form, the CPA is illuminated on
one side and the laser’s energy is completely ab-
sorbed by the lossy medium. This absorbed energy
is subsequently dissipated in the form of heat which
can be used. This makes the potential device useful
as an on chip-photovoltaic, for example, as the heat
from the device can be converted to a small voltage to
power a circuit, or as a transducer. We are all familiar
with transducers on some level. These devices con-
vert energy in one form to another. A microphone
is one example as it converts sound energy into an
electrical current while a speaker does this in reverse.
Thus the heat generated by the device can be con-
verted into a current and even serve as the basis of a
measuring device.
As intriguing as this one-port device is, the more
exciting and useful optical properties of the CPA is
revealed only when it is illuminated by two lasers
on opposite sides of the device. This two-channel
device, like it’s single-mode sibling, can also com-
pletely absorb incident radiation but this only takes
place under certain conditions. Light is a wave, its
amplitude varies over time, and we can compare
the movement of two waves relative to each other
by measuring their phase difference. If both wave
crests and troughs move in sync, we say they move in
phase. Similarly if they move completely out of sync,
we say they move out of phase. A CPA becomes
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Vol. 1, May, 10 2011
(b) Incoherent Light Source
completely absorbing only when the two incoming
laser beams meet these conditions. Thus, we have
the possibility of controlling the absorption proper-
ties of the lossy medium and the ability to turn it
on or off. This is the basis of a switch, an important
part of any circuit, which can find its way into optical
communications and circuitry.
Science’s Blackest Materials
The blacker a substance, the more light it absorbs.
This is not the first time scientists have experimented
with materials that absorb most, if not almost all,
of the incident radiation upon it. Scientists at the
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have created multi-
layered thin films that reflect less than 0.1% of the
radiation on its surface over a broad spectrum of fre-
quencies, while scientists from the National Institute
of Advances Industrial Science and Technology in
Japan have also created materials based on single-
walled carbon nanotubes that absorb over 99% if the
radiation on it. These materials can be used to coat
various surfaces to enhance their reflecting (or ab-
sorbing) properties, e.g. solar cell surfaces as we
would like them to absorb as much solar energy as
possible thereby making them more efficient. By us-
ing these materials to coat the surfaces of solar pho-
tovoltaics we can enhance their absorbing properties
to collect as much sunlight as possible. By definition,
CPAs aren’t “black” as they only completely absorb
at a single frequency, much in the same way a laser
only emits one frequency and it is unlikely that they
will meet the above applications in any form. Mean-
while, the materials described above are able to ab-
sorb at a range of frequencies, albeit a narrow one.
This isn’t to say that CPAs are useless, their po-
tential applications are just different. They may find
uses as optical transducers and switches which can
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(a) Waves moving in phase (b) Waves moving out of phase

Figure 5: Examples of Waves moving in Phase and out of Phase

in turn, be built on to an on-chip integrated optical
circuit (think light based electronic circuits). Mod-
ern day computers, for example, are built upon tiny
electrical switches so this opens lot of possibilities for
this device. While the device described by Stone and
his group of physicists is, at this stage, only theoret-
ical (it exists as a mathematical model) the group is
hard at work on creating such a device. It is only a
matter of time these devices find their way into the
technology we use, even if we may never see them
in operation or be aware of their existence.

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