Computer operations that conserve energy do not, from an information viewpoint, increase entropy and therefore have no minimum energy cost associated with them. An information-conserving operation must be reversible in principle; reversible optical gates inevitably incur losses. The energy per calculation may have many meanings, as we show. The energy expended by a single photon in a conservative optical operation is negligible, much less than kT.

Long, open-path, outdoor interferometric measurement of the index of refraction as a function of wavelength (spectral refractivity) requires a number of innovations. These include active compensation for vibration and turbulence. The use of electronic compensation produces an electronic signal that is ideal for extracting data. This allows the appropriate interpretation of those data and the systematic and fast scanning of the spectrum by the use of bandwidths that are intermediate between lasers (narrow bandwidth) and white light (broad bandwidth). An Environmental Interferometer that incorporates these features should be extremely valuable in both pollutant detection and pollutant identification. Spectral refractivity measurements complement the information available from spectral absorption instruments (e.g., a Fourier-transform infrared spectrometer). The Environmental Interferometer currently uses an electronic compensating device with a 1-kHz response time, and therefore rapid spectral scans are feasibe so that it is possible to monitor the time evolution of pollutant events.