CDs - DVDs - What's next?

Claude Fabre (left) and Hans Bachor (right)

As technology improves, it becomes easier to store more information - but is there a limit to it?

All our DVD and CD players contain lasers that measure very small marks on the disc and with every new format, the marks get smaller - they are close to the theoretical physical limit of the laser beam.

The quantum laser pointer will show a way to break these limits using quantum effects.

The breakthrough science, reported in the latest issue of Science, has been achieved through close collaboration between Professors Hans Bachor from ANU and Claude Fabre from the Ecole Normale Superieure at the University of Paris and their team of researchers.

Professor Fabre, visiting Canberra this week from Paris, said today, "The ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum-Atom Optics (ACQAO) at ANU has the best low noise light source in the world and their art of making very quiet light beams is appreciated worldwide".

Professor Bachor, while demonstrating the new quantum laser pointer machine in his laboratory, acknowledged that the initial research ideas began in Paris five years ago. Experiments followed at ANU while further theory was developed in Paris and after five years of research, the world's first quantum laser pointer was reported in Science.

"The Canberra Times" article, Saturday, 23 August 2003 (313 kB)