Beam Bagged: "Reverse Laser" Functions as Near-Perfect Light Absorber

Beam Bagged: "Reverse Laser" Functions as Near-Perfect Light Absorber

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_DD_20110221

"Since they were invented 50 years ago, lasers have become
extraordinarily commonplace. Anyone with a few dollars to spare can get
themselves a laser pointer, and every CD, DVD or Blu-ray player uses a
laser to read the bits encoded on discs. (It goes without saying that
the same is true of those old LaserDisc players.) Just about everyone
knows how lasers work, at least on the most superficial level—a
concentrated beam of light comes out when energy goes in.

"But what if that same process could be run in reverse, like a movie run
backward? Last year, a group of physicists at Yale University proposed a
way to do just that with something called a time-reversed laser. Such a
device, which some have described with the 007-appropriate "anti-laser,"
completely swallows light to produce heat or electricity using an
optical cavity that absorbs rather than amplifies light. In other words,
energy comes out when light goes in. Now the same researchers, along
with two other Yale colleagues, have actually managed to build an
anti-laser, which absorbs more than 99 percent of the light striking it
and converts it to thermal energy. They reported the advance in the
February 18 issue of Science".

See:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_DD_20110221