Mark Oxborrow of the National Physical Laboratory and Jonathan Breeze and Neil Alford of Imperial College London were highly commended by Physics World for building the first maser to operate at room temperature.

The MASER core - a sapphire ring containing
a reddish pink crystal that amplifies microwaves
to create a concentrated beam

This research was one of Physics World's top 10 breakthroughs for 2012. Criteria for judging the top 10 included: fundamental importance of research; significant advance in knowledge; strong connection between theory and experiment; and general interest to all physicists.

The announcement on the Physics World website stated:

"Solid-state masers are extremely sensitive microwave detectors and could therefore be used in a wide range of telecommunications and imaging applications. Until now, however, masers have needed to be chilled to extremely low temperatures using liquid helium in order to work - making them impractical for most commercial applications. This could all change thanks to Mark Oxborrow, Jonathan Breeze and Neil Alford, who have developed the first maser to operate a room temperature."

NPL would also like to congratulate scientists at CERN for topping Physics World's list for their discovery of a Higgs-like particle. This discovery is widely considered to be the most important in physics so far in the 21^st century and helped to catapult physics into the mainstream in 2012.

Find out more about NPL's Maser research

Physics World's Top 10 breakthroughs for 2012