Science in India: current scinario

INDIA: the land of Raman, Bose and Ramanujan. India contributed many things to the scientific world in past. Right now, with increasing number of research articles per year from India, India still needs to show its potential in doing a leading edge research in the field of science and technology. I started thinking on this issue of "science in India" after I read an article by R.A. Mashelkar that appeared in Science magazine in last week of April. That paper analyzes the situation science in India and suggets some points that can be considered for making the situation better. Opening new IISc's has done little to improve the situation.

Picture: Moon's surface taken from lunar orbit by Chandrayaan-1. Chandrayaan I found ice near Moon's north pole. (courtesy THE HINDU website)

detail at: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/328/5978/547.pdf

Phonon Laser: Light from Phonons

Celebrating 50 years of LASER

A phonon laser has been demonstrated by optical pumping of a trapped ion. The optomechanical interaction associated with the scattering force gives rise to a Van der Pol dynamical system in which amplification is provided by stimulated emission of centre-of-mass phonons. Steady-state operation occurs by saturation of the mechanical amplification, and excellent agreement is obtained between theory and observed mechanical motion versus pumping. The ability to locate microscopic sources of vibrational coherence that are optically driven and cooled (and addressable using wavelength) might provide a new tool in the field of trapped-ion physics. The fact that phonon laser action is sustained by very low power levels suggests that the ion might be used as an ultra-sensitive force probe. Moreover, amplification of the centre-of-mass motion36 is potentially useful in its own right. The single ion, as a class of phonon laser, represents a kind of zerodimensional limit in which there is no vibronic output coupling. In a Fabry Perot laser analogy, the mirrors would be 100% reflecting and threshold would be determined by internal cavity losses. At the same time, however, this does not preclude other types of useful coupling to the ion's vibrational motion (such as electromagnetic). For example, successful injection locking of the ion phonon laser, in analogy to slaving of a laser oscillator by an external master oscillator, has been achieved recently and will be reported elsewhere.

Picture: A Continuous Wave argon ion laser (514.5 nm) in use.

More details at:
http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v5/n9/full/nphys1367.html

LaserFest - Charles Townes

When I first learned about stimulated emission formulated by Einstein, it was part of introduction to LASER in my post graduation days. If you think I was introduced to it late and that I should have been introduced to it much before in my graduate days or during my high school you are right - I was introduced to it much earlier but never really grasped it and neither do I have any vivid memory of learning it before my post graduation days. Now, because I understood it only with respect to LASER I kind of had the idea that amplification must have been on the mind of Einstein after he formulated it. Also I had the idea that after the stimulated emission was formulated, the scientific world saw clearly that LASER were in principle possible. The only hurdle was to have the technology to do it. Looks like that was not the story!!!

I came across this video wherein Charles Townes, who is credited with developing the MASER - a predecessor to LASER, talks about the time when the idea of MASER came to his mind. What really interested me though was when he mentions that Einstein didn't think much about the amplification and its application!!

IF you are used to watching videos on youtube then you will find the video quality pretty ordinary. Nevertheless, the man in the video is not. Because his work led to the development of LASER which now plays such a vital role in our high tech world.