Billion-pulse-per-second laser to elevate extrasolar planet hunting
A device known as an optical frequency comb has proven its value in analytical instruments to detect such things as disease markers on human breath. Now, the National Institute of Standards and Technology have adapted this ultra-accurate spectral measurement device to the search for Earth-like planets. The pulse rate is much higher than any previous NIST comb.
Liquefaction is a quick chip fix, say researchers
Some researchers are using nano-scale physical properties, such as the surface tension of molten metal, to fix problems that fabrication methods can’t avoid. An electrical engineer at Princeton Univ. uses an excimer laser and a plate guide to eliminate defects by melting and shaping the circuits.
NTT achieves big performance gain on low-power optical memory
By moving away from silicon, a Japanese company was able to greatly increase the memory retention time of its newest photonic crystal memory chip. Made of a collusion of indium, gallium, arsenic and phosphorous, the new device holds memory for 150 nanosecs, 60 times the previous retention, while consuming just microwatts of power.
Spectroscopic analysis discovery may transform industry
A new anistrophic bond model developed by physicists at North Carolina State Univ. opens access to more details than ever before about how light interacts with the interface where two materials meet. Significantly, say the study’s lead authors, scientists will be able to greatly improve data using nonlinear-optical spectroscopy.
Tracking Speeding Photons
Just like human drivers, some photons are faster than others depending on road conditions. Nearly identical materials can make a huge difference to travel time, as discovered by Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), College Park, Md., scientists who built a specialized interferometer that can "stop-watch" individual photons.
The World’s Tiniest Nanophotonic Switch
Scientists at IBM, Yorktown Heights, N.Y., have taken another significant advance towards sending information inside a computer chip by using light pulses instead of electrons by building the world's tiniest nanophotonic switch. Its footprint is about 100x smaller than the cross section of a human hair.
Atoms and neutrons face the ultimate identity test
Interferometers yield high accuracy and resolution, enough to catch even tiny differences between atoms by exploiting their wave nature. A new Stanford Univ. has boosted the accuracy of interferometric wavefunction measurement of electron charge, or “e”, from 10-20e to 10-28e, a factor of 100 million.
Harnessing the power of terahertz radiation
Engineers have successfully demonstrated wires that carry plasmons at frequency from the far-infrared end of the electromagnetic spectrum. According to researchers, terahertz radiation waveguides could be a reality in as little as decade, allowing a big jump transmission speeds.
Head-mountable retinal scanning display relies on MEMS
Taking advantage of the human eye’s functionality, Brother’s new device makes use of high-speed low-intensity laser light to project an afterimage through the retina. The effect: an image presented without obstruction, perched in virtual space.
World’s shortest light pulse contains just one photon For quantum computers to work, developers must have a reliable source of identical short duration photons. Physicists at Oxford Univ. have moved the mark from 1 picosecond to just 65 femtosecs, minimizing the effects of entanglement.
Univ. of Texas’ 150 fs laser breaks petawatt barrier Physicists have successfully tested what is now the world’s most powerful laser, eclipsing the 300 TW (but highly repeatable) Hercules at the Univ. of Michigan. The new laser is intended to study the unique forms of matter that were seen when the first petawatt laser fired up 12 years ago.
Astro-comb pulls planets out of the light The exoplanets tally is quickly growing, but so far it’s been mostly gaseous planets. To find other Earths, Harvard has developed an “astro-comb,” a femtosecond pulsed laser linked to an atomic clock. The device, which could boost wobble (gravitational shifts in stars caused by exoplanets) resolution by a factor of 100, will be tested in Arizona this spring.
Scanning your way home The development of a 3-D laser scanner to help a German team compete in DARPA’s Urban Challenge last year had an unexpected benefit. While unlikely to make the fully automated automobile a reality, this scanner introduces a low-cost solution to applications in both marketing and digital mapping.
Tiny photonics logic circuit achieves quantum entanglement Using modern optical telecommunications technologies, UK researchers have fabricated a silica-on-silicon chip that functions as an optical controlled-NOT gate; the world’s smallest, in fact. According to the chip’s developer, it’s one of the building blocks for a quantum computer.
Tropical rainforest under attack…by trees Sometimes diversity is not a good thing. New sensing technologies aboard the Carnegie Airborne Observatory have allowed ecologists to efficiently map the progress of invasive tree species in Hawaii over an area of 2,200 km2.
New record: most information sent by a single photon Enter the strange world of quantum entanglement. Until recent results from the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the ability of “dense coded” photons to convey one of four messages has eluded physicists. The achievement furthers the promise of quantum communications.
The camera of 12,616 lenses First off, a camera with that many lenses can give you perfect focus, near or far. But Stanford Univ. developers say the instrument, which can create a 3-D depth map by measuring the distance to objects from each lens, could also be used for facial recognition, biological imaging, 3-D printing and modeling and even robot eyes.
Nanophotonic switch makes cross-section of hair look big IBM’s self-declared mission to build the world’s first on-chip optical network is steadily progressing. Now, the company’s engineers report having built a miniscule switch suitable for multi-core applications. The device features aggregate switching bandwidth of 1 Tb/s and is tolerant of temperature drift.
Sub-femtosecond ‘radar gun’ tracks photonic speeders Just like human drivers, some photons are faster than others depending on road conditions. Nearly identical materials can make a huge difference to travel time, as discovered by Joint Quantum Institute scientists who built a specialized interferometer that can “stop-watch” individual photons.
World’s most powerful medical instrument? A new femtosecond laser at the Univ. of Missouri is so quick and powerful it can “sinter” metal powders, turning them into a solid but porous mass. Scientists believe this ability can improve joint implant bonds, fusing bone and titanium as one.
Optical roadblock? Just eliminate the road One way to increase the performance of optical fibers, apparently, is to actually put things inside them. A trans-Atlantic team of scientists have built a single-crystal semiconductor into microstructured optical wires, eliminating a degradation-prone interface.
Surveillance camera brings TiVo convenience to the skies It looks like a colander, but it’s actually a gigapixel camera made up of an array of light-sensitive chips at the focal plane of a multiple-lens system. With 5 frames per second recording, a 21-km dia imaging range and a resolution of 0.3-m, the device is generating lots of interest.
Arizona lifts world’s largest binocular Its builders say the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory is the world’s most powerful telescope. Because the twin 8.4-m mirror setup boosts diffraction-limited image sharpness to that of a 22.8-m mirror, one astronomer believes the LBTO may capture the first optical images of extrasolar planets.
Pittcon 2008: Optical sensing goes modular Ocean Optics, established maker of miniature spectrometers, has banked on demand for small, easy-to-use spectrum analyzers. The design-minded Jaz, showcased at Pittcon 2008 this week, boasts several innovations and is a creative new take on optical sensing.
Student makes polarized LED a reality Martin Schubert, a post-doctoral student at RPI in Troy, N.Y., earned a $30,000 prize for his polarized LED. The innovation, a first, minimizes scattered light in the diode, allowing for more efficient light generation.
We know flow cytometry is widely used in biomedical research, molecular biology and proteomics, but can it crack the carbon cycle? That depends how much CO2 a tiny sea creature can absorb.
The world’s largest carbon sink is the world’s ocean, which have absorbed third of the carbon dioxide generated (about 118 billion tons) since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. That’s a lot of carbon.
Oceans react to the change in CO2 ratio by becoming more acidic. This reduces the amount of calcium carbonate available to sea creatures that depend on creating their own protective layers. This has had researchers worried about CO2 emissions killing off important coral species.
But another lesser known species—Emiliania huxleyi—is showing us just how readily some animals adapt. Known as the “lab rat” of coccolithophores, this animal, which grows small Frisbee-like calcium (see picture of the day) plates all over its microscope body, grows in such huge numbers it impacts the carbon cycle and is readily visible space when it blooms.
Researchers have been examining the role of coccolithophores with a variety of tools, from microsatellite examinations of phytoplankton toocean imaging satellites in Earth orbit. But flow cytometry was the key in revealing the fact that coccolithophores have increased their calcium carbonate production 40% since 1800, and will likely continue the process. As part of the study, scientists from the Univ of Washington analyzedE. huxleyi by detecting the light-absorbing or fluorescing properties of cells or cell fractions (chromosomes) passing through a laser.
Their results , supported by sediment cores taken from the North Atlantic by the National Oceanographic Centre, UK, show that calcification by phytoplankton could double by the year 2100. The implications of this finding are uncertain, but it’s clear that cytometry is widening its playing field.
