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Lasers

Amplified by randomness

Nature Physics volume 9, pages 325–326 (2013)Cite this article

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Usually a laser consists of a light-amplifying medium nested between two mirrors. A mirrorless laser that operates by forcing the light to take a long, random path through the gain medium has now been demonstrated.

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Figure 1: A random laser consists of a gas of two types of atom: One amplifies the light (red), and the other (blue) merely scatters the light in a random direction.

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  1. Vladan Vuletic is in the Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA,

    Vladan Vuletic

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  1. Vladan Vuletic
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Correspondence to Vladan Vuletic.

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Vuletic, V. Amplified by randomness. Nature Phys 9, 325–326 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2635

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