Nikolai Basov

genus. December 14, 1922
Russian physicist Nikolai G. Basov was born in the village (now city) Usman, near Voronezh, in the family Gennady Fedorovich Basov and Zinaida Molchanova. His father, a professor of the Voronezh Forest Institute, specializing in the impact of plantations on groundwater and surface drainage. Leaving school in 1941, the young B. went to serve in the Soviet Army. During the Second World War, he was trained at the assistant physician in the Kuibyshev Military Medical Academy and was assigned to the Ukrainian front.
After his discharge in December 1945. B. studied the theoretical and experimental physics at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute. In 1948, two years before graduation, he began working as a laboratory assistant in the Physical Institute. P.N. Lebedev, USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow. After graduating, he continued training under the guidance of MA. Leontovich and Alexander Prokhorov, Ph.D. (similar to the master's thesis) in 1953. Three years later he became a doctor of physical and mathematical sciences, with a thesis on theoretical and experimental studies of the molecular oscillator, which as the active medium used ammonia.
. Basic principle, . underlying molecular generator (now known as the maser, . the initial letters of the English expression, . signifier microwave gain through stimulated emission), . was first explained by Albert Einstein in 1917,
. Investigating the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and a group of molecules in a confined space, Einstein derived an equation with three members, which contains something unexpected. This term describes the absorption and emission of radiation by molecules. Specialists in quantum mechanics have shown that electromagnetic radiation consists of discrete units of energy called photons, and that the energy of each photon is proportional to the frequency of radiation. Similarly, the energy of atoms and molecules associated with the configuration and motion of their electrons, is limited to certain discrete values, or energy levels. Set of energy levels individually for each atom or molecule. Photons, whose energy is equal to the difference between two energy levels, can be absorbed, and then the atom or molecule moving from a lower to a higher energy level. Some time later, they again returned spontaneously to the lower level (not necessarily the one with whom started) and release energy equal to the difference between the old and new levels, in the form of photon radiation.
. The first two terms in the Einstein equations associated with known processes of absorption and spontaneous emission
. The third member, open Einstein, was associated with an unknown type of radiation while. It was a transition from a higher to a lower energy level caused by the mere existence of a suitable frequency of radiation whose photons have the energy equal to the difference between these two levels. Since this radiation does not occur spontaneously, but is triggered by special circumstances, it was called stimulated (induced) radiation. Although this was an interesting phenomenon, its use was not apparent. Physical law, formulated by the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann showed that in equilibrium the higher energy levels occupied fewer electrons than lower. Therefore, the stimulated emission of radiation involved relatively few atoms.
B. invented a way how to use stimulated emission to increase incoming radiation and create a molecular oscillator. To achieve this, he had to get the state of matter with inverted population of energy levels, increasing the number of excited molecules on the number of molecules in the ground state. This was achieved through the allocation of excited molecules, using for this purpose, non-uniform electric and magnetic fields. If this substance is to irradiate the desired frequency radiation whose photons have an energy equal to the difference between the excited and ground states of molecules, there is a stimulated emission of the same frequency, amplifies the signal feed. Then he managed to create a generator, sending part of the radiated energy on to excite more molecules and to obtain even greater intensification of radiation. The resulting instrument was not only the amplifier, but also generate radiation with a frequency of precisely identifying the energy levels of the molecule.
At the All-Union Conference on the radio-May 1952. B. Prokhorov proposed construction of a molecular oscillator based on the population inversion, the idea which they, however, have not published until October 1954. The following year, B. Prokhorov published a note on the 'three-tiered method'. According to this scheme, . If the atoms are transferred from the ground state to the highest of the three energy levels, . at the intermediate level is greater than the number of molecules, . lower than, . and can be induced by radiation with a frequency, . corresponding to the energy difference between the two lower levels.,
. American physicist Charles X
. Townes, working independently in the same direction at Columbia University, has created a working maser (he and his colleagues invented the term) in 1953, just ten months before the B. Prokhorov, and published his first work on the molecular generators. Townes used the resonant cavity filled with excited molecules of ammonia and reached the incredible increase in the microwave frequency 24000 MHz. In 1960, Mr.. American physicist Theodore Meimeh, working in the company, Hughes Aircraft ', built a device based on a three-tier principle to strengthen and generate red light. Resonant cavity Meimeh is a long synthetic ruby crystal with mirrored ends; exciting radiation were obtained at ambient Outbreak ruby spiral tube filled with xenon (similar to a neon tube). Device Meimeh became known as a laser - a name formed from the initial letters of the English expression meaning light enhancement through stimulated emission.
. "For fundamental work in quantum electronics, which led to the creation of generators and amplifiers based on laser-maser principle ', B
. divided in 1964. Nobel Prize in Physics with Prokhorov, and Townes. Two Soviet physics already received at that time for his work Lenin Prize in 1959
B. wrote one and co-authored hundreds of articles on the maser and lasers. His work on lasers dates back to 1957 when he and his colleagues began their development and construction. They consistently have developed many types of lasers based on crystals, semiconductors, gases, various combinations of chemical elements, as well as multi-channel and high-power lasers of rapid. B. In addition, first demonstrated the effect of the laser in the ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum. In addition to his basic research on population inversion in semiconductors and on the transition process in various molecular systems, it has devoted considerable attention to the practical applications of the laser, . especially the possibility of its use in thermonuclear fusion.,
. From 1958 to 1972
. B. was Deputy Director of Institute. P.N. Lebedeva, and from 1973 to 1989. - Its director. In the same institute he heads the Laboratory of Radiophysics since its inception in 1963. Since then, he is also professor of the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute.
In 1950, Mr.. B. married Xenia Tikhonovna Nazarova, physics of MEPI. They have two sons.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, B. awarded the title twice Hero of Socialist Labor (1969, 1982), was awarded the gold medal of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (1975). He was elected a corresponding member of USSR Academy of Sciences (1962), an active member (1966) and a member of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences (1967). He is a member of many other academies of sciences, . including the Polish Academy, . Czechoslovakia, . Bulgaria and France, he is also a member Germanskoy Academy of Natural Scientists 'Leopoldina', . Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences and the American Optical Society,
. Basov is vice-chairman of the executive board of the World Federation of Scientific Workers and president of the All-Union Society "Knowledge". He is a member of the Soviet Peace Committee and the World Peace Council, and the chief editor of popular science magazine 'Nature' and 'Quantum'. He was elected to the Supreme Council in 1974, was a member of its Bureau in 1982