Cover Story
Introduction: The Laser 1960-2010
Fifty years ago this month, physicist Theodore Maiman and his colleagues succeeded in making the first laser work at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, Calif., U.S.A.And five years before that, Charles Townes and his team laid the... more>>
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Hybrid Silicon Lasers: The Final Frontier to Integrated Computing
John Bowers, Di Liang, Alexander Fang, Hyundai Park, Richard Jones and Mario Paniccia
Silicon photonics may revolutionize the 21st century by bringing together two technological areas that transformed the 20th—photonics and microelectronics. Here, the team that pioneered optically and electrically pumped silicon lasers describes their groundbreaking work and where this exciting field is headed. more>>
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Lasers and the Glory Days of Industrial Research
Jeff Hecht
Fifty years ago, well-funded corporate labs were great places to do research. They could afford sophisticated equipment; they employed an enviable depth of talent; and they paid better than academia. That made them the ideal environment for developing lasers in the 1960s. more>>
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Reflections on the First Maser
James P. Gordon
Before the laser, there was the maser, and, before that, an idea: to build a microwave amplifier using ammonia molecules. Jim Gordon takes us back to the early 1950s, when he had to decide whether Charles Townes’s vision for creating a coherent oscillator was promising enough for him to commit to for his Ph.D. project. more>>