Question: What would you use the lasers for

Simone answered on 6 Nov 2018:

Let me see if I can introduce briefly a laser first:
Normally it is a material that emits light if excited (with a current for example), called gain, trapped in a cavity made by 2 mirrors (one of which lets a little bit of light escape) that keep reflecting this light until it builds up in intensity, forming the laser beam.

In my project, the laser would be made by a very small semiconductor emitting light and trapped in a cavity made by a reflective surface and a very small photonic crystal as mirrors.

This photonic crystal is normally trapping the laser light but if we disturb it (for example with an electric signal) it releases it.
So we can put this photonic crystal on a computer processor for the data transmission on the chip instead of the normal small copper wires currently used.

Whenever the processor has to send a signal that is a 1 to another processor (that would mean an electrical current flowing through the wire between them) instead the photonic crystal that is trapping light will be disturbed and the light released.
On the other processor there will be a detector that collects this light and translates it as a 1.

This could in principle replace the copper wires, that are wasting most on the energy in a computer, to move data around and between the chips