Light and Complexity

In a manuscript published in the Physical Review A (arXiv:1305.1053), Silvia Gentilini, Neda Ghofraniha, Eugenio Del Re, and Claudio Conti review the work about the generation and experimental characterizations of shock waves in thermal lensing, including the effect of disorder.

http://www.issnaf.org/in-the-spotlight/new-transistor-powered-by-light.html

http://www.repubblica.it/tecnologia/2013/05/08/news/transistor_ora_funzionano_con_la_luce_la_rivoluzione_elettronica_inizia_in_italia-58345910/

http://dbnotizie.altervista.org/post/6904/Un_transistor_rivoluzionario

http://www.ansa.it/scienza/notizie/rubriche/tecnologie/2013/05/09/transistor-rivoluzionario_8676037.html

http://gossip.libero.it/focus/25532562/un-transistor-rivoluzionario/transistor-roma/?type=

http://gossip.libero.it/focus/25527053/transistor-ora-funzionano-con-la-luce-la-rivoluzione-elettronica/transistor-materiales-de-madrid-cefe-lopez/?type=

http://gossip.libero.it/focus/25532562/un-transistor-rivoluzionario/energia/?type=naz

http://www.prismanews.net/scienze/transistor-rivoluzionari-a-emissione-di-luce.html

In a paper published in Nature Communications (arXiv:1304.8002), Marco Leonetti, Claudio Conti and Cefe Lopez report on the experimental evidence and the theory of an all-optical transistor-like action in a random laser.

It is shown that a signal can be routed inside a disordered resonator by using an all-optical control gate: a specific frequency can be transported, switched and amplified in different positions of the system.

Multiple frequencies can be processed simultaneously. The results are based on a novel spatio-spectral reconstruction technique.

This is the first demonstration of a logical operation in a random laser, and also the measurement of a novel kind of controlled transport in an active random system.

The picture below (by Marco Leonetti) shows the demonstrated transistor, with the gate (G), the source (S), and the drain (D) signals indicated in analogy with an electronic field effect transistor.