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Laser physics

A phase it's going through

Nature volume 449, pages 669–670 (2007)Cite this article

When we observe laser light, we typically measure its intensity, and so wave amplitude. The phase, which encodes further details of the laser's internal workings, was obscure — but fresh light is being shed on it.

Watch waves on the ocean. They can be characterized by their height (amplitude) and by when the peaks arrive (phase); without amplitude and phase, there is no wave. Light is also a wave, but one that is composed of intimately linked electric and magnetic fields. Most of the time, we can infer from experiment only the amplitude of light waves: this quantity is given by the intensity averaged over time, which is easily measured.

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Figure 1: Light from a quantum cascade.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. David S. Citrin is in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0250, USA, and the Unité Mixte Internationale 2958 Georgia Tech-CNRS, Metz, France. david.citrin@ece.gatech.edu ,

    David S. Citrin

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  1. David S. Citrin
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Citrin, D. A phase it's going through. Nature 449, 669–670 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/449669a

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