https://phys.org/physics-news/optics-photonics en-us The latest news on Optics and Photonics At particle accelerator facilities around the world, scientists rely on powerful X-rays to reveal the structure and behavior of atoms and molecules. Now, researchers from the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have calculated how to make X-ray pulses at X-ray free-electron lasers (XFEL) even brighter and more reliable by building a special cavity chamber and diamond mirrors around an XFEL. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-x-ray-laser-brightness-power-crystal.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 02 Aug 2023 13:10:10 EDT news610200606 A University of Minnesota-led team has, for the first time, engineered an atomically thin material that can absorb nearly 100% of light at room temperature, a discovery that could improve a wide range of applications from optical communications to stealth technology. Their paper has been published in Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-team-near-perfect-absorption-atomic-scale-material.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 02 Aug 2023 08:05:27 EDT news610182324 Can one see through a scattering medium like ground glass? Conventionally, such a feat would be deemed impossible. As light travels through an opaque medium, the information contained in the light becomes "jumbled up," almost as if undergoes complex encryption. Recently, Professor Choi Wonshik's team from the IBS Center for Molecular Spectroscopy and Dynamics (IBS CMSD) has discovered a way to utilize this phenomenon in optical computing and machine learning. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-exploiting-nonlinear-medium-optical-encryption.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 01 Aug 2023 10:03:04 EDT news610102981 Technological advancements like autonomous driving and computer vision are driving a surge in demand for computational power. Optical computing, with its high throughput, energy efficiency, and low latency, has garnered considerable attention from academia and industry. However, current optical computing chips face limitations in power consumption and size, which hinders the scalability of optical computing networks. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-harnessing-power-advancements-photonic-memory.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 31 Jul 2023 16:29:02 EDT news610039741 Quantum memory that depends on quantum-band integration is a key building block used to develop quantum networks that are compatible with fiber communication infrastructures. Quantum engineers and IT specialists have yet to create such a network with large capacity to form an integrated multimode photonic quantum memory at telecom band. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-telecom-band-integrated-multimode-photonic-quantum-memory.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Physics Mon, 31 Jul 2023 13:10:54 EDT news610027848 Bringing protons up to speed with strong laser pulses—this still young concept promises many advantages over conventional accelerators. For instance, it seems possible to build much more compact facilities. Prototypes to date, however, in which laser pulses are fired at ultra-thin metal foils, show weaknesses—especially in the frequency with which they can accelerate protons. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-method-proton-high-power-laser.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 31 Jul 2023 11:34:04 EDT news610022042 Topology plays an enormous role in modern condensed matter physics and beyond. It describes how solid materials can combine two very different and somewhat contradictory properties—for example, topological insulators are materials whose bulk acts as an insulator, but whose surfaces and edges can conduct electricity nonetheless. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-evidence-universal-topological-signatures-high.html Condensed Matter Optics & Photonics Mon, 31 Jul 2023 10:57:03 EDT news610019821 A long-standing challenge in the field of quantum physics is the efficient synchronization of individual and independently generated photons (i.e., light particles). Realizing this would have crucial implications for quantum information processing that relies on interactions between multiple photons. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-team-synchronizes-photons-atomic-quantum.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Physics Sun, 30 Jul 2023 09:10:01 EDT news609674506 Computational imaging has the potential to revolutionize optical imaging by providing wide field-of-view and high-resolution capabilities. Joint reconstruction of amplitude and phase—known as "coherent imaging or holographic imaging"—expands the throughput of an optical system to billions of optically resolvable spots. This breakthrough enables researchers to gain crucial insights into cellular and molecular structures for biomedical research. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-complex-domain-neural-network-advances-large-scale.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 27 Jul 2023 16:36:03 EDT news609694562 Researchers have developed a new method for capturing the complex behavior of turbulent flames produced during combustion. Insights provided by this high-speed 3D imaging approach could be used to develop more efficient and cleaner combustion systems for cars, airplanes, factories and power plants. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-high-speed-imaging-method-captures-3d.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 26 Jul 2023 13:35:03 EDT news609597301 Raman spectroscopy—a chemical analysis method that shines monochromatic light onto a sample and records the scattered light that emerges—has caused frustration among biomedical researchers for more than half a century. Due to the heat generated by the light, live proteins are nearly destroyed during the optical measurements, leading to diminishing and non-reproducible results. As of recently, however, those frustrations may now be a thing of the past. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-raman-technique-years-frustration.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 26 Jul 2023 10:25:46 EDT news609585942 New theoretical and experimental physics research shows the first ever creation of a diverse range of fine-sized, special polarization structures known as solitons in a multiferroic material. While solitons have been previously identified in pure ferroelectrics—or materials with polarization—this range of solitons had not been shown to exist in multiferroic materials, in which magnetic spin exists in addition to polarization. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-class-tiny-polarization-solitons.html Condensed Matter Optics & Photonics Wed, 26 Jul 2023 10:16:03 EDT news609585361 If you take an object and set it out in the sun, it will begin to warm up. This is because it is absorbing energy from the sun's rays and converting that energy to heat. If you leave that object outside, it will continue getting warmer, but only to a point. A sunbather lying on a beach won't catch fire, after all. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-energy-harvesting-law-breaking-device.html General Physics Optics & Photonics Tue, 25 Jul 2023 16:42:33 EDT news609522149 Precise control of light is a crucial requirement in optical imaging, sensing, and communication. Traditional lenses employed for the purpose have limitations, necessitating more precise and compact solutions. To address this need, researchers have developed metalenses, ultrathin lenses constructed from nanomaterials that are smaller in size than the wavelength of light. These sub-wavelength elements provide the means to manipulate light waves with exceptional precision, facilitating a precise control of the amplitude, phase, polarization, and direction of light waves. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-image-quality-broadband-achromatic-polarization-insensitive.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 25 Jul 2023 15:44:03 EDT news609518641 Computational imaging techniques are growing more popular, but the large number of measurements they require often lead to slow speeds or damage to biological samples. A newly developed physics-informed variational autoencoder (P-VAE) framework could help speed up computational imaging by using supervised learning to jointly reconstruct many light sources, each with sparse measurements. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-physics-framework-imaging-faster.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 25 Jul 2023 11:30:50 EDT news609503447 Managing and classifying waste accurately for reuse is a growing challenge in environmental protection. Addressing this issue, researchers at Hefei University of Technology in China have embarked on a quest to innovate in the realm of waste management, seeking effective methods that can simplify and improve the identification and classification of recyclable waste. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-recyclable-classification-laser-induced-breakdown-spectroscopy.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 25 Jul 2023 11:00:01 EDT news609494367 Fast data transmissions could be delivered in homes and offices through light-emitting diodes (LED) bulbs, complementing existing communication technologies and networks. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-future-internet-transmission.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 25 Jul 2023 10:03:27 EDT news609498205 For decades, imaging weakly scattering phase objects such as cells has been an active area of research across various fields, including biomedical sciences. One common approach uses chemical stains or fluorescent tags to bring image contrast to weakly scattering objects, but it requires relatively complex sample preparation steps, which can also be toxic or destructive to samples. Quantitative phase imaging (QPI) has emerged as a powerful label-free solution to this need, providing non-invasive, high-resolution imaging of transparent specimens without using any external tags or reagents. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-diffractive-networks-enable-quantitative-phase.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 24 Jul 2023 17:03:09 EDT news609436985 A team of researchers from the Accelerator Technology & Applied Physics (ATAP) Division at Berkeley Lab has developed a new technique for combining fiber lasers operating at different wavelengths to produce ultrashort laser pulses. The research was published in the journal Optics Express. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-spectrally-combining-lasers-unleash-potential.html Optics & Photonics Plasma Physics Mon, 24 Jul 2023 14:19:03 EDT news609427142 Scientists working on the Dark SRF experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have demonstrated unprecedented sensitivity in an experimental setup used to search for theorized particles called dark photons. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-ultra-sensitivity-dark-photon.html General Physics Optics & Photonics Fri, 21 Jul 2023 12:27:04 EDT news609161221 Pulsed laser scanning lidar is a core technology for autonomous driving and robotic mobility. Herein, a directional light pulse is backscattered by a reflective object and the elapsed time between emission and detection of the pulse is used to calculate depth. These direct time-of-flight (d-ToF) measurements of returning light pulses enable the three-dimensional imaging of complex scenes. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-wide-field-of-view-metasurface-enhanced-scanning-lidar.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 20 Jul 2023 15:29:58 EDT news609085796 Visible light is a mere fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum, and the manipulation of light waves at frequencies beyond human vision has enabled such technologies as cell phones and CT scans. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-discovery-terahertz-technology-quantum.html Condensed Matter Optics & Photonics Thu, 20 Jul 2023 14:16:03 EDT news609081361 The transition to chaos is ubiquitous in nonlinear systems. Continuous-wave-driven photonic-chip-based Kerr microresonators exhibit spatiotemporal chaos, also known as chaotic modulation instability. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-chaotic-microcomb-based-parallel-ranging.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 20 Jul 2023 13:10:06 EDT news609077401 Nearly a century ago, physicists Max Born and J. Robert Oppenheimer developed an assumption regarding how quantum mechanics plays out in molecules, which are comprised of intricate systems of nuclei and electrons. The Born-Oppenheimer approximation assumes that the motion of nuclei and electrons in a molecule are independent of each other and can be treated separately. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-unveiling-quantum-reveal-nexus-vibrational.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Physics Wed, 19 Jul 2023 12:37:01 EDT news608989017 Imagine shrinking light down to the size of a tiny water molecule, unlocking a world of quantum possibilities. This has been a long-held dream in the realms of light science and technology. Recent advancements have brought us closer to achieving this incredible feat, as researchers from Zhejiang University have made groundbreaking progress in confining light to subnanometer scales. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-waveguiding-scheme-enables-highly-confined.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 17 Jul 2023 15:11:07 EDT news608825463 Lasers are a significant historical invention with ubiquitous impact in society. The concept also has interdisciplinary applications as phonon lasers and atom lasers. A laser in one physical domain can be pumped by energy in another. Nevertheless, all lasers demonstrated in practice have only lased in one physical domain thus far. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-laser-squared-two-domain-photon-phonon.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 17 Jul 2023 11:20:01 EDT news608810673 Researchers from the Complex Photonic Systems (COPS) group used two layers of random materials to encrypt and decrypt a message sent via light communication. With that, they hid the sender and receiver simultaneously, and only when the light passed through both layers was the message received. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-communication-random.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 17 Jul 2023 10:07:33 EDT news608807250 By enabling the recording and reconstruction of faint light beams containing a single particle of light, a new technique opens the door to holographic imaging of remote objects. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-quantum-photonics-technique-holograms.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Physics Mon, 10 Jul 2023 11:25:21 EDT news608207118 Light, with its countless colors, is one of the wonders of nature. To truly understand what we see, it is essential to know the precise colors of the light with which we perceive our world. We achieve this by means of optical rules called frequency combs, the first realization of which won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2005. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-photonic-snake-states-instrument-unveiling.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 10 Jul 2023 11:25:16 EDT news608207113 Refractive index—the ratio of the speed of electromagnetic radiation in a medium to its speed in a vacuum—can be modulated fast enough to generate photonic time crystals (PTCs) in the near-visible part of the spectrum, a new study published in the journal Nanophotonics demonstrates. The study's authors suggest that the ability to sustain PTCs in the optical domain could have profound implications for the science of light, enabling truly disruptive applications in the future. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-photonic-crystals-door-optics.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 07 Jul 2023 11:04:26 EDT news607946657