A maser (/ˈmeɪzər/, an acronym for "microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation") is a device that

produces coherent electromagnetic waves through amplification by stimulated emission. The first maser was built by Charles H.
Townes, James P. Gordon, and H. J. Zeiger at Columbia University in 1953. Townes, Nikolay Basov and Alexander
Prokhorov were awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for theoretical work leading to the maser. Masers are used as the
timekeeping device in atomic clocks, and as extremely low-noise microwave amplifiers in radio telescopes and deep
space spacecraft communication ground stations.
Modern masers can be designed to generate electromagnetic waves at not only microwave frequencies but also radio and
infrared frequencies. For this reason Charles Townes suggested replacing "microwave" with the word "molecular" as the first
word in the acronym maser.[1]
The laser works by the same principle as the maser, but produces higher frequency coherent radiation at visible wavelengths.
The maser was the forerunner of the laser, inspiring theoretical work by Townes and Arthur Leonard Schawlow that led to the
invention of the laser in 1960. When the coherent optical oscillator was first imagined in 1957, it was originally called the "optical
maser". This was ultimately changed to laser for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation". Gordon Gould is
credited with creating this acronym in 1957.
The theoretical principles governing the operation of a maser were first described by Joseph Weber of the University of
Maryland at the Electron Tube Research Conference in 1952 in Ottawa,[2] with a summary published in the June 1953
Transactions of the Institute of Radio Engineers Professional Group on Electron Devices,[3] and simultaneously by Nikolay
Basov and Alexander Prokhorov from Lebedev Institute of Physics at an All-Union Conference on Radio-Spectroscopy held by
the USSR Academy of Sciences in May 1952, subsequently published in October 1954.
Independently, Charles Hard Townes, James P. Gordon, and H. J. Zeiger built the first ammonia maser at Columbia
University in 1953. This device used stimulated emission in a stream of energized ammonia molecules to produce amplification
of microwaves at a frequency of about 24.0 gigahertz.[4] Townes later worked with Arthur L. Schawlow to describe the principle
of the optical maser, or laser,[citation needed] of which Theodore H. Maiman created the first working model in 1960.
For their research in the field of stimulated emission, Townes, Basov and Prokhorov were awarded the Nobel Prize in
Physics in 1964.[5]

Terminology[edit]
The meaning of the term maser has changed slightly since its introduction. Initially the acronym was universally given as
"microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation", which described devices which emitted in the microwave region
of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The principle and concept of stimulated emission has since been extended to more devices and frequencies. Thus, the original
acronym is sometimes modified, as suggested by Charles H. Townes,[1] to "molecular amplification by stimulated emission of
radiation." Some have asserted that Townes's efforts to extend the acronym in this way were primarily motivated by the desire
to increase the importance of his invention, and his reputation in the scientific community.[15]
When the laser was developed, Townes and Schawlow and their colleagues at Bell Labs pushed the use of the term optical
maser, but this was largely abandoned in favor of laser, coined by their rival Gordon Gould.[16] In modern usage, devices that
emit in the X-ray through infrared portions of the spectrum are typically called lasers, and devices that emit in the microwave
region and below are commonly called masers, regardless of whether they emit microwaves or other frequencies.
Gould originally proposed distinct names for devices that emit in each portion of the spectrum, including grasers (gamma
ray lasers), xasers (x-ray lasers), uvasers (ultravioletlasers), lasers (visible lasers), irasers (infrared lasers), masers (microwave
masers), and rasers (RF masers). Most of these terms never caught on, however, and all have now become (apart from in
science fiction) obsolete except for maser and laser.
During the early 1960s, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed a maser to provide ultra-low-noise amplification of S-
band microwave signals received from deep space probes. This maser used deeply refrigerated hydrogen[citation needed] to chill the
amplifier down to a temperature of four kelvin. Amplification was achieved by exciting a ruby comb with a 12.0
gigahertz klystron. In the early years, it took days to chill and remove the impurities from the hydrogen lines. Refrigeration was a
two-stage process with a large Linde unit on the ground, and a crosshead compressor within the antenna. The final injection
was at 21 MPa (3,000 psi) through a 150 μm (0.006 in) micrometer-adjustable entry to the chamber. The whole system noise
temperature looking at cold sky (2.7 kelvins in the microwave band) was 17 kelvins. This gave such a low noise figure that
the Mariner IV space probe could send still pictures from Mars back to the Earth even though the output power of its radio
transmitter was only 15 watts, and hence the total signal power received was only -169 decibels with respect to
a milliwatt (dBm).

Some common types[edit]

 Atomic beam masers
 Ammonia maser
  Free electron maser
 Hydrogen maser
 Gas masers
 Rubidium maser
 Solid state masers
 Ruby maser
 Whispering-gallery modes iron-sapphire maser
 Dual noble gas maser (The dual noble gas of a masing medium which is nonpolar.[6])
 Electrons absorb an electric current or electromagnetic wave and become excited,which means they jump
from a low energy state to a higher energy state. Then, when they drop back down into the lower energy
state, the energy they must release to do so is released in the form of a photon. The photon's given off
from electron's this way are all the same wavelength, and are focused in the same direction.
 The difference between a laser and a maser is that the photon from a laser comes in the form of visible
light , while a photon from a maser comes in the form of a microwave . The changes in frequency and
wavelength come from the type of electromagnetic wave being absorbed, and/or the properties of the
material emitting the photon's.
 L.A.S.E.R. Stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
M.A.S.E.R. Stands for Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
 I hope I helped!