The laser (and maser)
Realización del láser (y máser)
- Date
- 1960 · confidence high
- Place
- Hughes Research Laboratories, Malibu, California, United States
- Credited to
- Theodore Maiman; Charles Townes; Arthur Schawlow; Nikolay Basov; Alexander Prokhorov
- People
- 👤 Aleksandr Prójorov1916–2002👤 Arthur Leonard Schawlow1921–1999👤 Charles Hard Townes1915–2015👤 Nikolái Gennadievich Basov1922–2001👤 Theodore Harold Maiman1927–2007
- Field
- Communication
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
On 16 May 1960 Maiman obtains coherent light from a ruby crystal pumped with a flash lamp, six years after Townes's maser. It demonstrates that stimulated emission can amplify light and produces the purest, most controllable light source in history.
Gordon Gould coined 'laser' in 1957 and won patent lawsuits decades later; Physical Review Letters (not Nature) first rejected Maiman's short paper (referee Samuel Goudsmit), which Nature finally published on 6 August 1960.
What it led to
- Nonlinear optics and photonics
- Fibre-optic telecommunications
- Laser cooling and optical clocks
- Gravitational-wave interferometry
- Inertial confinement fusion
Built on
- Stimulated emission of radiation1917
- Maser1954
- Einstein's stimulated emission (1917)
- Kastler's optical pumping
- Schawlow and Townes's proposal (1958)
Made possible
- Barcode and Universal Product Code1952-1974
- Helium-neon gas laser12 de diciembre de 1960
- Lidar1961
- Off-axis laser hologram1962
- Semiconductor laser diode1962
- Low-loss optical fibre1966-1970
- Precision-guided munitions (Paveway, JDAM)1968-1991
- Laser printer1971
- Laser measurement of the speed of light (Evenson)1972
- Compact disc1982
- 3D printing (stereolithography and FDM)1981-1989
- Buckminsterfullerene (C60)1985
- Chirped pulse amplification (CPA)1985
- Optical tweezers1970-1986
- Femtochemistry1987
- TAT-8 transatlantic fiber-optic cable1988
- Laser refractive eye surgery (PRK and LASIK)1983-1989
- Inertial fusion ignition (NIF)2022
- Laboratory fusion ignition (scientific gain above unity)2022
- CD readers and barcode scanners
- Laser surgery
- Optical fibre and communications
- LIGO