Erik Gauger

[email protected]https://qtt.eps.hw.ac.uk

Erik Gauger is a professor in the Institute of Photonics and Quantum Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, where he leads the quantum theory team.

FIGURE 1. Transforming bacteria into solar-powered lasers: we extract light-harvesting structures from bacteria (left), enhance them with proprietary specially engineered lasing units (middle), and place them into a lasing cavity (right) to create a new type of laser that runs directly on sunlight. The natural light-gathering rings (green/purple) of purple bacteria measure 60-nm across and achieve near-perfect efficiency in energy transfer of captured photons.

Lasers & Sources

Bio-inspired approach to harvest sunlight and convert it into laser beams in space

Erik Gauger

Feb. 7, 2025

A new way to power space missions piggybacks on bacteria's efficient light-harvesting abilities to create sunlight-powered lasers—and could enable power transmission between satellites...