Like laser emits light particles, one after another in a systematic fashion, an anti-laser does just the opposite. It sucks the photons constantly in reverse order. This is an idea the researchers have been working on for quite some time. However, there was a significant challenge. Our world isn’t as systematic as it needs to be for the systematic exchange of energy to take place. Hence, implementing the whole thing was quite a task for the scientists working on the project.
How Does it Work?
With this device, the scientists finally saw this whole thing coming to life. You see, this “anti-laser” device is capable of receiving scattered energy beamed around a space in a haphazard manner which makes it possible to receive 99.996% of the sent power. The formal term for this method is coherent perfect absorption (CPA). This uses a machine to send energy across the room and the anti-laser sucks it back. In the past, such experiments had a time-reversal symmetry. For instance, in a video, if a person is making a pizza, you will see the person place the sausages on the pizza bread. However, if you play the same video backward you will see the person taking the sausages off the bread and placing them back. In this particular experiment, the researchers used magnetic fields to swing photons so aggressively that time-reversal symmetry was lost. Imagine it like stirring sugar in hot water (you cannot un-stir it, right?). And even in this scenario, the device received the power. This “proves that the concept of CPA goes far beyond its initial conception as a ‘time-reversed laser’” wrote the researchers in their paper. Well, yes it’s still a dream, a dream of a future with no cables and wires. However, with this invention, we are definitely one step closer to making that dream a reality.
