Nobel Prize in Physics: Seeing the Light

lidden writes "The Nobel Prize in Physics 2005 has been awarded Roy J. Glauber "for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence". And John L. Hall and Theodor W. Hänsch "for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique"."

Comments

Bandwidth enhancement?

[dada21]

The ambiguity of light (wave and/or particle) has always made my head spin. To think that a bulb gives off light in "infinite" (lower limit time angle of tau) blows my mind.

Affiliating light with quantum theory seems like a stretch as quantum theory answers seem deus ex machina to me. I'm sure "wiser" people give this discovery merit, but even the "advanced information" link is ambiguous.

If we can now comb out light frequencies to within 15 digits of accuracy, it seems like we can increase bandwidth over laser optics by many orders of magnitude. The long term gain in communications bandwidth could be huge if the technique is feasible cheaply by industry.

If this technique can somehow be utilized with the radio spectrum instead of light, I wonder if similar increases in data space could be realized. I never contemplated light to radio in the physical sense.

Re:Bandwidth enhancement?

[Alomex]

To quote Richard Feynman:

"It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama."