Researchers have developed a laser that can concentrate 250 nanowatts of power into a 30-nanometer-wide spot, an advance which could lead to hard disks with 10 terabits of data packed into a square inch.

The nanolaser is an important step toward a disk-writing system that many researchers are currently working on. Such a system would use both light and magnetic fields to store data on a disk, packing up to 50 terabits per square inch of data.