This is pretty interesting, there is also tons of room for improvement and optimization.<p>One of the reasons why PV cells are far below their theoretical efficiency, which is something like 93%(Carnot efficiency based on sun temp which doesn't exactly equate to this application but is close enough), is because pv materials have a band gap and waste a lot of the broad-spectrum light energy from a source such as the sun(massive oversimplification).<p>If this became a thing, it would be plausible for solar pv material guys to put their heads together with laser manufacturers and create a pv/laser combination with absurd efficiency(perhaps >80%). I wasn't able to find the conversion efficiency in the article, I would be interested to know what it was.