Iresearchers at IITM generate lasers from carrots, a global first

Indian Institute of Technology Madras Researchers have demonstrated the possibility of generating biocompatible lasers from carrots, exploiting a process first discovered by Sir C.V. Raman who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930. This finding by the IIT Madras team, a first-of-itskind development even globally, promises significant advancements in scientific and industrial research on optical spectroscopy and sensing. Apart from being bio-friendly, the system they envisage is robust and reliable, with good and linear response to temperature. Being completely natural and fully biocompatible, this system can be used with other bio-entities for their sensing based on the proposed laser. Being very robust and highly reliable, this ‘kitchen laser’ has very good and linear response for temperature which could be used for temperature sensing too.

Lasers are ubiquitous sources of light with extraordinary properties such as high degree of directionality and sharpness. They are indispensable in a dazzling range of products and tech- nologies including communication, lithography, medicine, military operations, scientific research, engineering, displays, and data storage. In this case, a particular class of lasers called ‘random lasers’ have been demonstrated in carrots where a Raman process plays a central role along with the cellulose network. The Research was undertaken by a team comprising Prof. C. Vijayan of the physics department, IIT Madras and Dr. Sivarama Krishnan, along with Mr. Venkata Siva Gummaluri, PH.D. scholar, Physics department, IIT Madras.