FUTURE HARD DISKS: NANO MAGNETICS AND FEMTO SECONDS

Yesterday, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) announced which four researchers will receive the NWO/Spinoza Prize for 2008. The prize is the highest Dutch award in science. Each researcher receives one-and-a-half million euros, to be spent on research of their choice. The researchers receive the prestigious prize for their outstanding, pioneering and inspiring scientific work.

Amongst the winners of the NWO/Spinoza Prize 2008 is Theo Rasing (purple shirt), Professor of experimental solid state physics at the Radboud University Nijmegen. Studying the magnetic properties of magnetic nanostructure, Rasing's most recent and successful work includes the use of ultrafast laser pulses to manipulate nano magnets.

Think hard drives! Today's hard drives store data by means of electromanic heads, but Rasing managed to do the same with high speed laserlight. It's not difficult to imagine what that could mean for hard disk speed - using Rasing's technology, hard drives will be capable to store data up to one hundred thousand times faster than traditional drives!

Isn't that something we all love? If you're really into this you can check some related papers at Theo's "Radboud University" page below.

"Although the presence of the magnetic effect itself was still demonstrated with an old laser system, one could not really make use of this technique before femtosecond modelocked Ti:sapphire oscillators were brought to the market."

Femtoseconds?

  Theo Rasing