Left and right circularly polarized light, where the electromagnetic waves spiral in a clockwise and counterclockwise manner as they travel, plays a crucial role in a wide range of applications, from enhancing medical imaging techniques to enabling advanced communication technologies. However, generating circularly polarized light often requires complex and bulky optical set-ups, which hinders its use in systems with space constraints.
Posted on 17 January 2025 | 5:14 pm
The next generation of atomic clocks "ticks" with the frequency of a laser. This is about 100,000 times faster than the microwave frequencies of the cesium clocks which are generating the second at present. These optical clocks are still being assessed, but already now, some are 100 times more accurate than cesium clocks. They will therefore become the future basis for the worldwide definition of the second in the International System of Units (SI).
Posted on 17 January 2025 | 4:02 pm
For the first time ever, scientists have used a technique called "quantum squeezing" to improve the gas sensing performance of devices known as optical frequency comb lasers. These ultra-precise sensors are like fingerprint scanners for molecules of gas. Scientists have used them to spot methane leaks in the air above oil and gas operations and signs of COVID-19 infections in breath samples from humans.
Posted on 16 January 2025 | 7:00 pm
Paper-thin optical lenses simple enough to mass produce like microchips could enable a new generation of compact optical devices. A team with researchers at the University of Tokyo and JSR Corp. fabricated and tested flat lenses called Fresnel zone plates (FZPs), but did so for the first time using only common semiconductor manufacturing equipment, the i-line stepper.
Posted on 16 January 2025 | 5:25 pm
Researchers have developed a reliable and reproducible way to fabricate tapered polymer optical fibers that can be used to deliver light to the brain. These fibers could be used in animal studies to help scientists better understand treatments and interventions for various neurological conditions.
Posted on 15 January 2025 | 3:00 pm
Physicists have spent more than a century measuring and making sense of the strange ways that photons, electrons, and other subatomic particles interact at extremely small scales. Engineers have spent decades figuring out how to take advantage of these phenomena to create new technologies.
Posted on 14 January 2025 | 3:01 pm
Diamond, often celebrated for its unmatched hardness and transparency, has emerged as an exceptional material for high-power electronics and next-generation quantum optics. Diamond can be engineered to be as electrically conductive as a metal, by introducing impurities such as the element boron.
Posted on 14 January 2025 | 10:00 am
Since the invention of the laser in 1960, nonlinear optics has aimed to broaden light's spectral range and create new frequency components. Among the various techniques, supercontinuum (SC) generation stands out for its ability to produce light across a wide portion of the visible and infrared spectrum.
Posted on 13 January 2025 | 10:04 pm
Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory joined forces with EPB of Chattanooga and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to demonstrate the first transmission of an entangled quantum signal using multiple wavelength channels and automatic polarization stabilization over a commercial network with no downtime.
Posted on 13 January 2025 | 3:01 pm
Researchers have developed a new method for quickly detecting and identifying very low concentrations of gases. The new approach, called coherently controlled quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy, could form the basis for highly sensitive real-time sensors for applications such as environmental monitoring, breath analysis and chemical process control.
Posted on 9 January 2025 | 3:00 pm
Depth degradation is a problem biologists know all too well: The deeper you look into a sample, the fuzzier the image becomes. A worm embryo or a piece of tissue may only be tens of microns thick, but the bending of light causes microscopy images to lose their sharpness as the instruments peer beyond the top layer.
Posted on 7 January 2025 | 8:43 pm
Metrology serves as the cornerstone of modern industry, providing the key standards by which we measure the world. Optical metrology, in particular, has historically leveraged the notion of interference, essentially unchanged since the days of Thomas Young more than 200 years ago. However, can one glean more information by extrapolating the concept of fringes to other degrees of freedom?
Posted on 7 January 2025 | 7:49 am
Prof Zhang Zhiyong's team at Peking University developed a heterojunction-gated field-effect transistor (HGFET) that achieves high sensitivity in short-wave infrared detection, with a recorded specific detectivity above 1014 Jones at 1300 nm, making it capable of starlight detection. Their research was recently published in the journal Advanced Materials, titled "Opto-Electrical Decoupled Phototransistor for Starlight Detection."
Posted on 2 January 2025 | 7:48 pm
Detecting infrared light is critical in an enormous range of technologies, from remote controls to autofocus systems to self-driving cars and virtual reality headsets. That means there would be major benefits from improving the efficiency of infrared sensors, such as photodiodes.
Posted on 2 January 2025 | 5:56 pm
Super-resolution (SR) technology plays a pivotal role in enhancing the quality of images. SR reconstruction aims to generate high-resolution images from low-resolution ones. Traditional methods often result in blurred or distorted images. Advanced techniques such as sparse representation and deep learning-based methods have shown promising results but still face limitations in terms of noise robustness and computational complexity.
Posted on 30 December 2024 | 1:58 pm
Combining metallic glass with the Berreman mode of epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) thin films achieves a dual-function system for infrared camouflage and thermal management within an identical wavelength region of the atmospheric window. In recent research, metallic glasses were selected for their tunable optical properties, providing adjustable emissivity for versatile thermal camouflage while maintaining effective thermal management.
Posted on 27 December 2024 | 2:10 pm
Optical tweezers and related techniques provide extraordinary opportunities for research and applications in the physical, biological, and medical fields. However, certain requirements such as high-intensity laser beams, sophisticated electrode designs, additional electric sources, and low-conductive media, significantly impede their flexibility and adaptability, thus hindering their practical applications.
Posted on 27 December 2024 | 12:12 pm
A research team led by Prof. Li Chuanfeng from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) has achieved a breakthrough in quantum photonics. They developed an on-chip photonic simulator capable of simulating arbitrary-range coupled frequency lattices with gauge potential. This study was published in Physical Review Letters.
Posted on 27 December 2024 | 12:12 pm
Scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a highly effective and general molecular design that enables an enhancement in radioluminescence within organometallic scintillators by more than three orders of magnitude. This enhancement harnesses X-ray-induced triplet exciton recycling within lanthanide metal complexes.
Posted on 24 December 2024 | 3:30 pm
A research group led by Prof. Yao Baoli and Dr. Xu Xiaohao from Xi'an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics (XIOPM) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have revealed a full-gray optical trap in structured light, which is able to capture nanoparticles but appears at the region where the intensity is neither maximized nor minimized. The study is published in Physical Review A.
Posted on 24 December 2024 | 3:20 pm
Bright, twisted light can be produced with technology similar to an Edison light bulb, researchers at the University of Michigan have shown. The finding adds nuance to fundamental physics while offering a new avenue for robotic vision systems and other applications for light that traces out a helix in space.
Posted on 23 December 2024 | 6:13 pm
Researchers at the University of Tsukuba have developed an innovative method for rapidly creating laser light sources in large quantities using an inkjet printer that ejects laser-emitting droplets.
Posted on 23 December 2024 | 3:34 pm
Plasmons are collective oscillations of electrons in a solid and are important for a wide range of applications, such as sensing, catalysis, and light harvesting. Plasmonic waves that travel along the surface of a metal, called surface plasmon polaritons, have been studied for their ability to enhance electromagnetic fields.
Posted on 20 December 2024 | 6:09 pm
Northwestern University engineers are the first to successfully demonstrate quantum teleportation over a fiberoptic cable already carrying internet traffic.
Posted on 20 December 2024 | 4:00 pm
A team of physicists and engineers at China's Hefei National Laboratory has succeeded in conducting the first instance of precise absolute distance measurement over a path exceeding 100 km. The group has written a paper describing how they achieved such a feat and posted it on the arXiv preprint server.
Posted on 20 December 2024 | 2:50 pm
Reliably measuring the polarization state of light is crucial for various technological applications, ranging from optical communication to biomedical imaging. Yet conventional polarimeters are made of bulky components, which makes them difficult to reduce in size and limits their widespread adoption.
Posted on 20 December 2024 | 12:20 pm
UNSW engineers have developed and built a special maser system that boosts microwave signals—such as those from deep space—but does not need to be super-cooled.
Posted on 19 December 2024 | 5:38 pm
Mechanical crystals, also known as phononic crystals, are materials that can control the propagation of vibrations or sound waves, just like photonic crystals control the flow of light. The introduction of defects in these crystals (i.e., intentional disruptions in their periodic structure) can give rise to mechanical modes within the band gap, enabling the confinement of mechanical waves to smaller regions or the materials—a feature that could be leveraged to create new technologies.
Posted on 19 December 2024 | 1:00 pm
Miniaturized spectroscopy systems that can detect trace concentrations at the parts-per-billion (ppb) level are of the utmost importance in applications ranging from environmental monitoring and industrial process control to biomedical diagnostics. However, the existing bench-top spectroscopy systems are too large, complex, and impractical for narrow-space use. Furthermore, the traditional laser spectroscopy techniques use bulky components like light sources, mirrors, detectors, and gas cells to detect light absorbed or scattered by a sample, which makes them unsuitable for scenarios calling for minimal invasiveness such as intravascular diagnosis.
Posted on 18 December 2024 | 10:03 pm
A team of researchers has identified a unique phenomenon, a "skin effect," in the nonlinear optical responses of antiferromagnetic materials. The research, published in Physical Review Letters, provides new insights into the properties of these materials and their potential applications in advanced technologies.
Posted on 18 December 2024 | 8:49 pm
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Posted on 25 October 2024 | 5:17 pm