Researchers Create Laser The Size of Grain of Rice

Researchers at Princeton University have created a laser the size of a single grain of rice, powered by artificial atoms dubbed quantum dots.

The tiny laser uses only around one billionth the amount of electricity that a typical hair dryer uses. The laser uses a single electron, that tunnel through these quantum dots as a power source.

According to researchers, the tiny laser itself is a source of energy (in the microwave range), which could be a preferred way to demonstrate how light and moving electrons interact.

The new microwave laser, dubbed maser is a significant step forward in quantum computing. These could guide the way to build a computing system from a semiconductor material quantum dots.

Using nanowires around 50 nm in diameter constructed from indium arsenide, the researchers created the quantum dots with even more diminutive metal wires that controlled how much energy the dots could contain. Then, in order to construct the maser, two double dots were placed about 6 millimeters apart in a niobium cavity, cooling the entire apparatus to near absolute zero. Scientists were able to make the dots emit microwave photons, which were then bounced off mirrors that had been affixed to each end of the niobium cavity, creating the microwave laser light, noted SNM Weekly. 

The related study has been published in the journal Science.