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Phoenix666 brings us this story from Science Daily:

Technion researchers have demonstrated, for the first time, that laser emissions can be created through the interaction of light and water waves. This "water-wave laser" could someday be used in tiny sensors that combine light waves, sound and water waves, or as a feature on microfluidic "lab-on-a-chip" devices used to study cell biology and to test new drug therapies.

For now, the water-wave laser offers a "playground" for scientists studying the interaction of light and fluid at a scale smaller than the width of a human hair, the researchers write in the new report, published November 21 in Nature Photonics.

[...] A typical laser can be created when the electrons in atoms become "excited" by energy absorbed from an outside source, causing them to emit radiation in the form of laser light. Professor Carmon and his colleagues now show for the first time that water wave oscillations within a liquid device can also generate laser radiation.

The possibility of creating a laser through the interaction of light with water waves has not been examined, Carmon said, mainly due to the huge difference between the low frequency of water waves on the surface of a liquid (approximately 1,000 oscillations per second) and the high frequency of light wave oscillations (1014 [Sic: 10¹⁴ meant] oscillations per second). This frequency difference reduces the efficiency of the energy transfer between light and water waves, which is needed to produce the laser emission.

The full article is paywalled, an abstract is available.

Use of a liquid lasing medium isn't a completely novel idea, dye Lasers already exist. Using mechanical interactions to store the pumped energy, however seems to be their breakthrough. It would have been nice if there had been some more concrete examples of the applications of this technology.

Original Submission