DocumentCode :
1351185
Title :
Quantum Energy for Space [Point of View]
Author :
Burgess, Luke ; Bergstue, Grant ; Fork, Richard
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. & Electr. Eng., Univ. of Alabama Huntsville, Huntsville, AL, USA
Volume :
99
Issue :
11
fYear :
2011
Firstpage :
1831
Lastpage :
1834
Abstract :
Clean renewable energy passes continuously as sunlight through near Earth space and is lost to us forever. This energy is lost at a rate a million times the total rate of energy use on Earth. Our point of view is that accessing and effectively using this otherwise lost energy is a demanding, but currently achievable, engineering task. This may seem counterintuitive since the relevant physical processess have their origin in nanometer dimension atomic states while the applications occur on a multimegameter scale. This opportunity however occurs because: 1) stimulated emission enables population of the required superposition states of lowest order Gaussian modes of the optical field by large numbers of quanta of the optical field; and 2) the vacuum of space enables propagation of these superposition states over the multimegameter distances of interest with minimal disruption of the original superposition states.
Keywords :
Gaussian processes; solar power; space power generation; stimulated emission; sunlight; clean renewable energy; lowest order Gaussian mode; multimegameter scale; nanometer dimension atomic states; near Earth space; optical field; quantum energy; stimulated emission; sunlight; superposition states; Laser beams; Optical imaging; Orbits; Quantum computing; Simulated emission; Space communication; Space vehicles; Terrestrial atmosphere;
fLanguage :
English
Journal_Title :
Proceedings of the IEEE
Publisher :
ieee
ISSN :
0018-9219
Type :
jour
DOI :
10.1109/JPROC.2011.2165759
Filename :
6046157
Link To Document :
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