Fifty years after physicists invented the laser, ushering in everything from supermarket scanners to music CDs (SN: 5/8/10, p. 18), scientists have conceived its opposite — the “antilaser.”
Unlike its more popular cousin, the antilaser is unlikely to take over the world. Still, it could be useful one day, for instance in new types of optical switches for computers.
No one has yet reported building an antilaser, but a theoretical description of one appears in a paper published July 26 in Physical Review Letters.