Nobel Prize History
The Nobel Prize is the most prestigious award in the scientific world. It was created according to Mr. Alfred Nobel’s will to give a prize “to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind” in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. A sixth prize would be later on created for economic sciences by the Swedish central bank.
The decision of who to attribute the prize to belongs to multiple Swedish academic institutions.
Legacy Concerns
The decision to create the Nobel Prize came to Alfred Nobel after he read his own obituary, following a mistake by a French newspaper that misunderstood the news of his brother’s death. Titled “The Merchant of Death Is Dead”, the French article hammered Nobel for his invention of smokeless explosives, of which dynamite was the most famous one.
His inventions were very influential in shaping modern warfare, and Nobel purchased a massive iron and steel mill to turn it into a major armaments manufacturer. As he was first a chemist, engineer, and inventor, Nobel realized that he did not want his legacy to be one of a man remembered to have made a fortune over war and the death of others.
Nobel Prize
These days, Nobel’s Fortune is stored in a fund invested to generate income to finance the Nobel Foundation and the gold-plated green gold medal, diploma, and monetary award of 11 million SEK (around $1M) attributed to the winners.
Source: Britannica
Often, the Nobel Prize money is divided between several winners, especially in scientific fields where it is common for 2 or 3 leading figures to contribute together or in parallel to a groundbreaking discovery.
Over the years, the Nobel Prize became THE scientific prize, trying to strike a balance between theoretical and very practical discoveries. It has rewarded achievements that built the foundations of the modern world, like radioactivity, antibiotics, X-rays, or PCR, as well as fundamental science like the power source of the sun, the electron charge, atomic structure, or superfluidity.
The Potential Of Lasers
Invented in 1960, lasers became a sensation in the world of physics research almost instantly. Lasers are coherent beams of light, creating a very narrow beam of light of a single wavelength that does not disperse over long distances.
Source: Britannica
The creation of the laser itself would be very quickly rewarded with a Nobel prize, in 1964 to Townes, Nicolay G. Basov, and Aleksandr M. Prokhorov “for fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which has led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on the laser-maser principle”.
This is because it became quickly obvious that lasers would have a large array of applications, from industrial production to communication.
However, other scientists were not looking at lasers from this angle and instead studied the technology further. And would win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018 for their discoveries.
Arthur Ashkin studied how a laser could be used to move microscopic items, using only the “weight” of a light beam. Meanwhile, Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland developed a method to create ultra-fast and ultra-power laser pulses, but decades later, there is no end in sight on how far this technique can go to boost the speed and power of lasers.
Source: Nobel Prize
Pushing With Light
Despite being weightless, the photons that constitute light carry a small amount of energy and, therefore, momentum. In theory, this is enough to create movement without touching an object.
To move objects with this effect is, however, difficult, as the induced movement is very small. So, in practice, it can only work in space (solar sails) or on microscopic objects.
This was the field of research favored by Arthur Ashkin at Bell Laboratories. He started using micrometer-sized transparent spheres and confirmed they could be pushed by lasers.
A surprising observation was that the spheres were attracted by the center of the laser beam, which was the strongest. He would find that this is because the edge of the laser beam is weaker, hence holding the particle in the center of it.
Trapping Particles With Light
This was when Ashkin had the breakthrough of turning the laser into tweezers that could grab and move items at will. To do so, he added a lens to the installation that would refocus the laser so it concentrated into a specific point in space. At this focal point, the particle is being trapped, as the pressure of the laser’s light keeps pulling it back to the center.
Source: Nobel Prize
By 1986, this method called “single-beam gradient force optical trap” was established, and soon known by the more colloquial “optical tweezers”. It could trap particles ranging from tens of nanometers to tens of micrometers.
The techniques quickly became a major way to trap, manipulate, and cool down individual atoms.
Manipulating Living Cells At Will
But Ashkin was more focused on its potential in manipulating living things like viruses and bacteria. As the green laser he had used so far was too strong, he switched to an infrared laser that was a lot less damaging to living organisms. This method quickly proved that it could move entire viruses or bacteria, as well as push and move internal components of the cells.
This would soon lead to measurement of the torsion created by a bacteria flagellum, the force exerted by microtubules (part of the cell “skeleton”) inside cells, and manipulation of sub-components of plant cells.
Source: Nobel Prize
Further progress in the technique precision and controls would lead to being able to manipulate components as small as a single base pair of DNA, measure the mechanical forces of protease (enzyme degrading proteins), and unfold RNA molecules.
New ideas are still being developed in this field of science, such as holographic optical tweezers, which thousands of tweezers can use simultaneously.
A similar concept, using soundwaves instead of laser (acoustic tweezers), is also currently being perfected. We explored how it could revolutionize surgery and medicine in our article “Targeted Drug Delivery Could Benefit From New Technique Involving Soundwaves.”
Ultra-Fast Laser Pulses
When laser came out, the first uses developed were done with a continuous laser beam. But quickly, it became clear that a high-energy pulse could be more useful for many other applications requiring the delivery of a lot of power almost instantaneously.
At first, improvements were made using mode-locked lasers, a method allowing the boost of nanojoule pulses to the millijoule level, a million-fold increase in power. However, this progress stagnated in the 1970s, as the growing levels of energy were damaging the amplifiers used.
Source: Nobel Prize
The only way to go around the problem that was found was using a laser beam with a larger diameter. However, these were expensive and would be available to only a few national research institutes. In addition, they could only fire a few shots per day, severely hindering research requiring such laser pulses.
Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA) To The Rescue
It was becoming clear that the technology of laser pulse was stagnating, and with it, all other research programs that depended on them. This is where Donna Strickland, a PhD student, and her supervisor, Gérard Mourou, at the University of Rochester in the US would win their part of this Nobel Prize.
The central idea was to first “stretch” the laser pulse, reducing its peak power. This means that it could now be amplified without damaging the amplifier material. It would then be “re-compressed” back into a short pulse, greatly increasing the power of the pulse beyond what was possible before. The technique was called Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA).
The concept was simple, but its implementation was not. It took several years for the two researchers actually to manage it. They used more than a kilometer of optical fiber and struggled to synchronize all the components. It was only in 1985 that they would manage, and that CPA would go on to be used to create ever more powerful laser pulses.
Source: Nobel Prize
Ultra-Fast Laser Pulses Applications
Infinitesimal Time Observations
One of the applications of ultrashort laser pulses is to “illuminate” a target very briefly, in the order of the femtosecond, one million of a billionth of a second. This makes the observation of phenomena like molecule chemical reactions previously seen as instantaneous possible.
Source: Nobel Prize
Further progress is even opening a whole new scientific field, attosecond science (1/1000th of a femtosecond). With it, scientists can study the electron dynamics inside atoms and molecules, and matter in the condensed phase could be probed.
Medical Uses
These lasers are also used to create laser-plasma acceleration, accelerating particles like protons and electrons at extreme levels of energy. These can be used for radiation therapy, and using lasers allows for machines small enough to fit in a hospital setting.
Ultra-fast lasers are also used for eye surgery, from LASIK surgery to remove the need for glasses to photocoagulation to treat diabetic retinopathy (diseases of the retina).
Source: Nobel Prize
Material Sciences
Lasers can be used to carve into materials very precisely. However, the problem is that too long of use of the laser creates quick heating of the material, which creates damaging shockwaves.
Femtosecond lasers are still performing the carving but are short enough not to overheat, removing this problem.
Source: Nobel Prize
As we mentioned, this allows the use of lasers for eye surgery, data storage, and manufacturing of surgical stents, micrometer-sized cylinders of stretched metal inserted in the body’s blood vessels, and other canals.
Investing In Laser Technology
Lasers are present in countless parts of modern technology, from optical disks to surgery tools, 3D printing, semiconductors, manufacturing, and genome sequencers, with a $17.8B market expected to grow by 7.8% CAGR until 2030.
You can read more about laser potential in our article “Lasers Are Set to Play a Pivotal Role in Coming Decades as Technology Advances,” including future new uses, like in defense, health, and nuclear fusion.
You can invest in laser-related companies through many brokers, and you can find here, on securities.io, our recommendations for the best brokers in the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, as well as many other countries.
If you are not interested in picking specific companies, you can also look into technology ETFs like iShares U.S. Technology ETF (IYW) or ProShares Nanotechnology ETF (TINY), even if there is no dedicated laser-only ETF available, which will provide a more diversified exposure to capitalize on the laser & tech stocks.
Laser Companies
1. II-VI Marlow / Coherent
Coherent is a large industrial conglomerate with 26,000+ employees and a leader in laser technology, resulting from the merger of advanced material II-VI Marlow with laser maker Coherent.
The company is an expert in advanced materials used in lasers, optics, and photonics, such as indium phosphide, epitaxial wafers, and gallium arsenide. It grew largely thanks to multiple acquisitions over the last decade.
Source: Coherent
The company derives 29% of its revenues from laser, with the rest linked to associated equipment like optical fiber, electronics, and instrumentation.
Source: Coherent
The presence of the company in advanced materials like thermophotovoltaics (which we discussed in a previous article), silicon carbide, lasers, and electronics helps it benefit from structural trends like the growth of precision manufacturing, additive manufacturing (3D printing), electrification, and renewables energies.
The company has recently separated its silicon carbide business into a new entity, owned at 75% by Coherent, with the rest owned equally by its partners Mitsubishi Electric (bringing silicon carbide power IP) and Denso (bringing its activity as an automotive supplier on electrification and power semiconductors).
2. Corning
Corning is a manufacturing technology company and a leader in laser markets, with a focus on 3 core techs: glass sciences, optical physics (including lasers), and ceramic sciences.
Source: Corning
With 50,000+ employees, it is present in many markets, including optical fibers (it invented the first low-loss optical fiber in 1970), precision manufacturing, damage and precision glasses, wireless networks, and automotive emission control (ceramic for catalytic converters).
Because lasers themselves rely on very pure materials and precisely crafted glasses, there are a lot of synergies between the different technologies held by Corning.
Overall, the company has a long history of successful innovation in its core technology, including:
- Heat-resistant glass PIREX.
- LCD glass.
- Antimicrobial glass.
- Image capture technology for the James Webb telescope.
- Beam-focusing lenses for nuclear fusion.
Source: Corning
It also sells many laser-based tools, like cutting and polishing glass and other brittle materials.
Source: Corning
Advanced lenses, lasers, and ceramics are becoming increasingly important in all sorts of high-tech applications, from semiconductor manufacturing to life science.
The company has a presence in aerospace, biotech & pharmaceuticals, electronics & display, optical communication, and automotive, as well as technological leadership in its niches.
All these sectors are growing quickly and becoming increasingly reliant on high-tech equipment supplied by specialized providers. So, the company should be able to keep growing steadily and remain a leading force in its multiple sectors.