Room Temperature, Earth's Field MASER

The work we propose in this research is to construct a MASER that can work at room temperature and in the Earth's magnetic field.

The MASER (Microwave amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation) is in fact the forerunner of the LASER and was discovered around 50 years ago by Townes, Basov, and Prokhorov who shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work. A LASER can be thought of simply as MASER that works with higher frequency photons in the ultraviolet or visible light spectrum whereas a maser works at microwave frequencies. Both systems rely on a chemical species with an excited energy-level population being stimulated into lower energy levels, either by photons or collisions with other species. Photons are then emitted by the atom or molecule, in addition to the original photons that entered the system. The photons entering the system stimulate the emission of further photons of the same frequency, meaning that a strong beam of monochromatic radiation is produced.

Originally the laser was seen as a good idea looking for an application. They were made in small numbers and at one point the US government decreed that every laser should be stamped with a number for military and security purposes - an idea that soon lost its appeal when the market potential for the quantities of the devices became apparent. Today lasers are made in their billions and have found their way into applications in all sectors of industry from DVD players to laser eye surgery.

Masers on the other hand are used only in very specialised applications such as atomic clocks and as amplifiers in radiofrequency telescopes. Masers were responsible for the stunning images of the solar system sent by the Voyager spacecraft.

So why have masers not been widely applied? There are two key reasons. First masers need cryogenic temperatures and this means the use of either cryogenic liquids or special fridges. Second, they need high magnetic fields and this means the use of bulky magnets that need high power and usually cooling with water, if an electromagnet, or with helium, if a superconducting magnet.

This research is aimed at producing a maser that will operate at room temperature and in the earth's magnetic field. This is of course an extremely ambitious project but it is borne out of research in some of the materials that will be used in the project and these are the very high Q resonators. Work on high Q resonators has been carried out by the group for several years and now it appears that a solid state maser can be made using a high Q resonator and quite a low power. Our initial scouting experiments have shown that it is indeed possible to achieve masing at room temperature and earth's field in pulsed mode. The research that will be carried out will explore new materials that will miniaturise the maser and require very low power to achieve the threshold required for masing.

Who will benefit from this research?

As noted in the case for support, the laser is now a pervasive technology used in literally billions of electronic devices across all industrial sectors. But this was certainly not the case in the early development of the laser. The laser was originally regarded as a good idea looking for an application but its implementation was originally fraught with difficulties. What we hope to demonstrate in this proposal is to overcome the key barriers to implementation of a simple, low cost maser. Under these circumstances this proposal will lead to new avenues of research in the UK and elsewhere, it will generate interest from industry across several sectors and could reasonably be identified as a "world first".
It is most likely at industry will benefit in numerous ways. The realization of compact, low-power and thus affordable, particle accelerators for medical analysis, diagnosis and treatment based on the "PASER" (particle acceleration by stimulated emission of radiation) mechanism is likely. This would impact upon instrumentation development and industries involved in healthcare. It would of course, impact upon NHS costs. This would certainly offer the UK a good chance of early development and it may also offer an excellent chance of foreign direct investment in a nascent industry.
Low cost masers will benefit huge sections of the population as we expect the uses to spread across many sectors of industry and across the globe. The immediate beneficiaries will be the scientific and engineering communities engaged in academic research but we expect the industrial potential to follow relatively quickly so that in a 5 year timeframe we should see a Global understanding of the potential and in the 10 year timeframe an industrialisation of the concepts. Given the speed with which IT developments can be made, this timeframe may not be unrealistic.


How will they benefit from this research?

The simple answer is that the COST of masers will reduce dramatically - by many orders of magnitude as the complexity is reduced (no magnets and no cooling). The nest step will require industrial involvement in order to take the proof of principle to a higher technology readiness level. In the proposal we hope to be in a position to prepare the groundwork for this and by doing so we aim to attract industrial partners to takethe technology forward.