Laser studies at the Nobel Prize in Physics
2005/10/04 Roa Zubia, Guillermo - Elhuyar Zientzia
American Roy Glauber will receive half the prize for his work on the quantum description of light. Photons, particles of light, do not always act as particles, sometimes have an undulatory nature and present diffraction and other physical behaviors. According to the light source, in addition, these waves are of different nature. For example, the light emitted by a normal bulb is a mixture of high-frequency waves, while the light emitted by a laser is a unique frequency wave, which propagate in phase. Glauber has developed a theoretical explanation of this coherence, which physicists have called a coherent wave.
The other half of the prize will be for American John Hall and German Theodor Hänsch. His research is related to a wide field of laser application: laser spectroscopy. In short, spectroscopy is a way of separating atoms and molecules, and therefore an important basis of analytical physics and chemistry. Hall and Hänsch studied how to apply the laser to this technique for precision analysis.
The laser, therefore, won the Nobel Prize in Physics this year. Awarded are physicists who collaborated in the development of common tools in laboratories around the world.
