Room-Temperature Masers

1. History: The first maser’s were very low powered and required bulky vacuum chambers. Later, solid-state maser’s were created, but these required very low-operating temperatures and generally a continuous magnetic field. What’s A Maser?: A maser is a device that in broad strokes produces the emission of microwave radiation with similar characteristics to the visible light produced by a laser. While maser’s pre-date lasers they are much less common because of difficult operating conditions making them unwieldy and increasing the expense of operation. Uses: Currently the prohibitive cost of operation of maser’s have restricted them to use by large organizations. NASA uses them to receive the low-strength transmissions from the Voyager probes. With reduced cost of operation from room-temperature solid-state masers higher-fidelity scanning and communications equipment could be manufactured at a reasonable cost. Room-Temperature Masers How it works: This new type of maser works differently than previous masers. It uses p-terphenyl doped with pentacene instead of a crystalline ruby. Also it uses a medical laser as it’s source rather than a microwave source, taking advantage of an incompletely understood process called "spin-selective intersystem crossing“. An image of the maser core, backlit with yellow pump light, developed at the National Physical Laboratory in the UK. (Courtesy: NPL) http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2012/aug/15/first-room-temperature-maser-developed