Nobel Prize in Physics: Seeing the Light 130
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"."
Bandwidth enhancement? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Wikipedia (Score:3, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glauber [wikipedia.org]
If this guy is good enough to win the Nobel, how come
he isn't in Wikipedia?
Re:Bandwidth enhancement? (Score:3, Interesting)
Quantum theory pretty much came out of studying light. Planck's constant, one of the defining characteristics of quantum theory was a result of Planck studying blackbody radiation. Same kind of radiation emmitted from a light bulb, just at a lower energy.
And the measurement process, which almost no one is in agreement about, is about the only thing in the theory that has elements of deus ex machina.
Re:Bandwidth enhancement? (Score:3, Interesting)
And yet light wins out when it comes to raw transmission bandwidth. The same thing that makes it tough to modulate - i.e. it's high frequency, is what makes it attractive in terms of big fat pipes.
Re:Bandwidth enhancement? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's all a question of perspective
Re:Bandwidth enhancement? (Score:5, Interesting)
"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."
Re:From a Student (Score:3, Interesting)
It was probably the best course I have ever taken in any subject, but certainly out of my physics classes I will always remember it very fondly for how he was able to combine very illustrative descriptions of theory with very good physical demonstrations.
Somewhat sadly, I eventually took up work in the computer field rather than stick with physics. So I cannot say that it laid the foundation for a career in physics for me, but I never looked at physical reality the same way since then and I have always tried to look more carefully whatever the subject.
Very happy to see him recognized today for his achievements, he is a good person and a great teacher.