A team co-led by SPIE Fellow Vladimir Shalaev, SPIE Members Mikhail Noginov and Evgenii Narimanov, and SPIE author Ulrich Wiesner has demonstrated the smallest laser ever, with technology which could form the basis of future optical computers.
The team's work is described in the journal Nature, and was reported on in papers at SPIE Optics and Photonics in San Diego, California, earlier this month.
The device has been dubbed a "spaser," because it generates a form of radiation called surface plasmons, notes a report in the MIT Technology Review newsletter.
Noginov is at Norfolk State Univ., Wiesner is at Cornell Univ., and Shalaev and Narimanov are at Purdue Univ.
