A team of Yale University scientists have built a device that can absorb a laser beam entirely.
Their device focuses two lasers beams of a specific frequency into a specially designed optical cavity made from silicon, which traps the incoming beams of light and forces them to bounce around until all their energy is dissipated.
The idea of an anti-laser device has been around for a while and even posited in a paper by one of these Yale guys last year but this is the first time someone has constructed an actual thing. As for applications for this, no one’s quite sure. It could be of some use in optical switches on new computers that use light as well as electrons. But perhaps the most potent use is that finally we have the technology to ruin Pink Floyd concerts.
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