Applications

to put at the terminal the information on infiared lasers and radiate it directly, without any cables, into one's sitting room.

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12.13.17 Nuclearapplications
Let u's tum now to some potential applications which may acquire high
importance in the future. Take laser.fusion for example. The chances of success seem fairly small, but the possible rewards are so high that we just cannot afford to ignore the subject. The principles are simple. As I have already mentioned, a plasma may be heated by absorbing energy supplied by a number of highpower pulsed lasers. The fusion fuel (deuterium and tritium) is injected into the reactor in the form of a solid pellet, evaporated, ionized, and heated instantly by a laser pulse, and the energy ofthe liberated neutrons is converted into heat by (in one of the preferred solutions) a lithium blanket. which also provides the much needed tritium. Next in importance is another nuclear application, namely isotope separatiotl. With the change from fossil to fissile energy sources, we shall need more and more enriched uranium. The cost of uranium enrichment in the USA for the next 20 years has been estimated at over 100 000 million dollars. Thus, the motivation for cheaper methods of separation is strong. The laser-driven process. estimated to be cheaper by a factor of20, is based on the fact that there is an optical isotope shift in atomic and molecular spectra. Hence, the atoms or molecuies containing the desired isotope can be selectively excited by laser radiation. The separation of excited atoms may, fbr example, be achieved by a second excitation in whicli they become ionized and can be

collected by an electric field. A disadvantage of the process is that. once perfected. it ivill enable do-ityourself enthusiasts lwith possibly a sprinkling of terrorists among them) to make their own atomic bombs.

12.13.18 Holography
As the last application. I r.vould like to mention holography, a method of image reconstruction invented by Dennis Gabor in 1948 (Nobel Prize, 1973). It is difficult to estimate at this stage horv important it will eventually turn out to be. It may remain for ever a scientific curiosify rvith some limited applications in the testing of materials. On the other hand it might really take offand might have as much influence on life in the 21st century, as the nineteenth century invention of photography has upon our lives. The technique is by no means limited to the optical region; it could in principle be used at any frequency in the electromagnetic spectrum, and indeed, holography can be produced by all kinds of waves including acoustic and electron waves. Nevertheless, holography and laser became strongly related to each other. mainly because holographic image reconstruction can most easily be done with lasers at optical frequencies. The basic set-up is shown schematically in Fig. 12.27. The laser beam is split into two, and the object is illuminated by one of the beams. The so-called 'hologram' is obtained by ietting the light scattered from the object interfere with the other beam. The pattern that appears depends both on the phase and on the amplitude of the scattered light, storing this information on a photographic