
TechnologyOctober 1, 1990
The Photorefractive Effect
A laser beam passing through a crystal can suddenly burst into a spray of light. This photorefractive effect may be the key to developing computers that exploit light instead of electricity

The Photorefractive Effect
A laser beam passing through a crystal can suddenly burst into a spray of light. This photorefractive effect may be the key to developing computers that exploit light instead of electricity

Applications of Optical Phase Conjugation
"Time-reversed" light waves can be used to improve laser-beam quality, compensate for atmospheric turbulence, track a moving satellite, encode and decode messages and compare image patterns