Optical Photonics
Featured Topics in Information Tech: CPUs | Optical Photonics | Software | Green Technology | Medical Technology | all topics
Filter by: News | Articles | New to Market | Tools & Technology | Videos | Podcasts | Journal Articles | White Papers
Mar 17 | News
Researchers at the Univ. of Rochester's Institute of Optics have discovered a way to make liquid flow vertically upward along a silicon surface, overcoming the pull of gravity, without pumps or other mechanical devices.
Mar 10 | News
The Optical Society of America has highlighted an upcoming presentation at an annual optics conference San Diego in which the researchers from Germany will describe a method for encoding a wireless broadband signal through the light generated by a common household lamp. Visible-frequency signals have a tremendous advantage in bandwidth, and modulation would be so fast no one would notice the flickering.
Feb 24 | News
Polymethine organic dye materials tailored by a Georgia Tech team combine large nonlinear properties, low nonlinear optical losses, and low linear losses. These qualities are considered essential for optical engineers developing low-power, high-contract optical switching technology.
Jan 18 | News
Using advanced optical control techniques and holograms, researchers in the UK reported the ability to bend light into “knots”. The achievement is possible because of light’s ability to form vortices, or whirls and eddies that in some sense replicate the flow of water in a river.
Jan 12 | News
Northwestern Univ. researchers have developed compact, mid-infrared laser diodes that generate more light than heat—a breakthroughs in quantum cascade laser efficiency. The results are an important step toward use of quantum cascade lasers in a variety of applications, including remote sensing of hazardous chemicals.
12/28/2009 | News
Scientists have shown for the first time that insects, like
mammals, use vision rather than touch to find footholds. They made the
discovery using high-speed video cameras—the same technology the BBC uses to
capture its stunning wildlife footage—that they used to film desert locusts
stepping along the rungs of a miniature ladder.
12/22/2009 | News
Researchers at Caltech have proposed a new paradigm that should allow scientists to observe quantum behavior in small mechanical systems. Their ideas offer a new means of addressing one of the most fascinating issues in quantum mechanics: the nature of quantum superposition and entanglement in progressively larger and more complex systems.
12/16/2009 | News
Molecular kinetics is an emerging field of research that only now is bridging the gap between studying molecular reactions outside the cell and actually witnessing reactions inside the cell, where molecular concentrations are much higher and kinetics are thought to differ substantially. Optical innovations is permitting the new R&D to take place.
12/15/2009 | News
Quantum optics researchers from the Univ. of Toronto have discovered new behaviours of light within photonic crystals that could lead to faster optical information processing and compact computers that don't overheat.
12/10/2009 | News
Terahertz rays can penetrate clothing, plastic, and human tissue, and are useful for differentiating chemicals. And they are safer than x-rays. But practical ways to generate these rays are hard to find, and tuning them still more difficult. The best generator is probably the quantum cascade laser, and now MIT scientists have announced the first practical method for tuning this type of laser.