Scicurious

In this final episode of the 6 part series talking with LGBT physicists, I chat to the brand new, green-as-they-come Ph.D student, Alex Blanchard. I met Alex a years ago at a Glasgow Frontrunners social. He's a real delight - always smiling, talented musically, and a hard working physicist working in optics.  A few notes on this week's content from Alex: "A Quantum Cascade Laser works by having numerous quantum wells with an applied electric field, which tilts them energetically. The quantum wells have two energy levels of interest: the energy level before and after emitting the photon. The tilting effect makes the energy level of the electron in the first well after emitting the photon at the same energy as the energy level before emitting a photon in the next quantum well (see attached picture). So after emitting a photon, the electron tunnels into the next well, at the energy level before emitting another photon, where it emits another photon. With enough wells in sequence together, one electron emits nume