Einstein, Masers, and Lasers: Asking New Questions
February 2006, page 11
The
link between Albert Einstein's 1916 proposal of downward stimulated atomic transitions and the
development in the 1950s and 1960s of masers and lasers using stimulated emission is often noted
and the question sometimes asked: Why did it take so long? The more interesting question might be,
Did Einstein think that his proposed transitions represented a linear amplification process
for the stimulating light? At that time, would he have encountered an amplifier of any kind? More
broadly, would he or any physicist of that era have any familiarity with the basic concept of "coherent"
amplification at any frequency, much less the concepts of feedback and coherent oscillation?
Vacuum tubes had just begun to be explored; radio technologies used essentially incoherent spark-gap
transmitters and crystal detectors; and stereo systems were far in the future. Insights on these
queries from anyone familiar with Einstein's writing and thinking could be quite interesting.
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