So, for example, put this "laser transistor" into a circuit powered by a battery.

The charge (electrons) coming out of one terminal of the battery not the same as the charge going back into the other other terminal? Don't think so!

If this was the case, the circuit would very quickly rise to a very high potential above earth.

Don't touch!

 

Well, tomorrow will be a week since the announcment. I haven't seen any news reports of the beakdown in all known physics theory, so I'm going to call this claim about Kirchoff's law debunked.

Still, this device appears to be a real advancent worthy of notice. I don't know why such a good engineering accomplishment had to be mixed up with such a bad theoretically inaccurate statement.

Reading the scientific description linked above, there is nothing out of the ordinary in terms of semiconductor theory, nor the electrical/optical details of this laser's operation. I know you are all shocked about that.

 

From what I inferred, all they are saying is that electrical current may not always be the only thing at a node in a circuit. Some of that current may well go into light energy (can you say 'photo transistor'....) so at the node where a photo transistor exists, the laws really don't take that into account either, and if the photo part of a new transistor also happens to make laser light, well, fine, same basic idea. Let's just say perhaps they made a photo-laser transistor and understand that Kirchhoff's laws still apply, as long as you account for both the electron and "photon currents"...

We worked on a device in the AF Research Lab called a 'QWITT' diode, which was a 'quantum well injection/transit time' device. It was essentially a laser, made also from III-V materials. A transistor is an electron pump in a sense, meaning it can control large currents via a small one. A semiconductor laser is nothing more than a region in which electrons are excited and when they lose energy, it comes off as a photon (the LED part of a transistor), and since all electrons in the compound make the same jump up and down in energy, the light emitted is not only the same frequency, but due to the geometry of the region, the light is also highly collimated. If their device is simply controlling the admission of electrons into a SC laser region, that is nothing more than combining a SC laser with an external transistor to control the current the laser gets, which we did back in the day.

The lasers we made were operationally dependent on two cleaved surfaces which acted like mirrors on either end which under electric potential would 'bounce' the electrons back and forth until they achieve the energy needed to hop out of the quantum well and fall back into it, thereby lasing in the process.

At least that's how I remember it. This was all about 15 years ago or more. You can probably dig it up in the literature if interested.

 

From what I inferred, all they are saying is that electrical current may not always be the only thing at a node in a circuit. Some of that current may well go into light energy (can you say 'photo transistor'....) so at the node where a photo transistor exists, the laws really don't take that into account either,

Yes, but the article seemed to be claiming some new discovery and the need to modify Kirchoff's current law. Phototransistors/photodiodes have been around for a long time and they are treated as current sources.

In other words, the claim about Kirchoff's law doesn't make any sense; or, if it does it would have made sense a long time ago. Basically, the fact is that charge is always conserved, which is the basic underlying statement of Kirchoff's current law. Charge conservation is independent of energy conservation, so it's not clear why they make a statement about combining the ideas into one law.

It's probably a case of misquoting, or the scientist wasn't thinking clearly when he made the statement. Still, it's a pretty big flub that needs to be identified in order to prevent misinformation.

 

Has anyone sent an email to the reporter? I would not be the one to compile said email, but I would love to have a more definitive reason for the claim.

 

I think we all know the reason for the 'announcement': Research Funding from folks that don't understand the claims... There is no other reason.