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Is the laser a quantum device?
The laser was developed in spite of quantum mechanics (QM), not as a result of QM.
H R Townes, the inventor of the laser, happened to mention to Niels Bohr what he was working on, Niels replied that it could not possibly work because of the uncertainty principle. Thankfully Townes ignored Niels Bohr.
Neils Bohr also told Hanbury Brown that his proposal to measure the diameter of stars using intensity correlations could not possibly work, because of the uncertainty principle. Hanbury ignored Niels and spent 17 years at Narrabri successfully measuring star diameters.
Twenty years later an absurd theory of bunching, based on erroneous measurements of arrival statistics for laser light was developed, to explain the Hanbury Brown Twiss effect. This effect was also thought to explain the operation of the laser.
QM has now incorporated a QM interpretation of the Hanbury Brown Twiss effect into its vocabulary.
Barry
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