Quantum researchers created a new kind of laser built from sound
A tiny silica bead, just 100 nanometers across, sits suspended in a vacuum and vibrates under the grip of laser light. Those vibrations might sound like a small detail, but in this case they are the heart of a new kind of laser, one that works not with light particles, but with particles of mechanical motion. Researchers at the University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology have built what they describe as a squeezed phonon laser, a system that gives unusually tight control over phonons, the quantum units of vibration or sound. Their results, reported in Nature Communications, push phonon lasers into new territory by combining laser-like coherence with reduced noise in a levitated nanoparticle system. That matters because noise is a constant problem in precision measurement. Even ordinary lasers, which look steady to the eye, are never perfectly calm. Their output fluctuates, and those fluctuations can blur a signal. The same basic problem affects phonon lasers. “While a laser looks to the naked eye like a steady beam, there’s actually a lot of …
