Efforts are underway to use laser nuclear fusion to create energy by accessing the deuterium abundantly present in sea water. Hamamatsu Photonics developed a high-power semiconductor laser that can be used to excite that primary laser. People say that it will be another 50 years before laser nuclear fusion is ready for practical application, and there are still many problems to be solved in this field. The challenge of power generation using laser nuclear fusion still stretches out far ahead of us.

High-power semiconductor lasers are highly efficient when it comes to energy conversion, and don't require large-scale equipment. As industrial applications for these lasers continue to advance, we can look forward to processing equipment that is significantly smaller and offers far higher output than existing devices that use other laser systems. These lasers may well change the whole configuration of the production environment.

If it becomes possible to supply low-cost energy using laser nuclear fusion, high-power semiconductor lasers could be used to create "plant factories" that would produce food far more efficiently than we do at present. Not only that, but we could also conceivably use the plants grown there as substitutes for fossil fuels and as raw materials for industrial purposes. Such plant sources hold out high possibilities as energy sources when we move on from using fossil fuels.

Another area in which photonics is making an increasingly large contribution is in environmental fields. LIDAR, for example, detects various states in the atmosphere such as chronological changes occurring in atmospheric pollution and the ozone layer. CRDS uses an absorption method to enable high-sensitivity measurement and identification of the absorption spectra of gaseous matter. Another next-generation environmental measuring technology that is eliciting high expectations for the future is the quantum cascade laser, which can be used to oscillate selected wavelengths in the infrared region.

On our global Web site, under the heading "What Can We Do With Light?" (under "Special Contents"), we explain our thoughts concerning how we want to go about creating new fields of industry based on opto-technology. We hope you'll take a look at that along with the information provided here.