Optics

Airy Beams And Light Bullets That Can Twist Around Curves

Light beams travel in straight lines and don't go around corners, they instead spread through a process known as diffraction. Researchers at Tel Aviv University have discovered that small beams of light can indeed be bent in a laboratory setting, dif ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 16 2010 - 11:34am

Brillouin Amplification And Creating Light From Sound

When light is used to transmit information,  modulated light pulses travel along optical fibers, which can become weaker due to optical attenuation in the fiber and so are refreshed in signal regeneration stations along the way, where the signals are ampli ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 23 2010 - 9:31am

Entangled Photon Pairs Get A Little Brighter

Future technology such as quantum cryptography and computation, or perhaps even larger scale teleportation, requires a deeper understanding of the phenomenon known as "entanglement", the quantum non-local connection, an aspect of quantum theory a ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 10 2010 - 6:56pm

Optics Compared To Quantum Mechanics

Optics normally treats the behaviour of packages of light waves (photons). However, when passing through appropriately shaped fields, particles may behave similar as photons. A beam of electrons that is not too dense will under such conditions behave simi ...

Article - Hans van Leunen - Jul 27 2010 - 9:56am

Schrödinger's Cat Now Made Of Light

A "cat state" is a curiosity of the quantum world, where particles can exist in "superpositions" of two opposite properties simultaneously. Cat state is a reference to German physicist Erwin Schrödinger's famed 1935 theoretical not ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 1 2010 - 1:01pm

Never Exercise Again- Optogenetics Is A Literal Light Workout For Muscles

Unable to exercise?   Some new research may be hope in keeping muscles from atrophy.   Researchers from Stanford University have shown how to use light to induce muscle contraction. But don't cancel your gym membership just yet.  The study used bioeng ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 26 2010 - 2:12pm

Frontiers In Optics And Adventures In Table-Top Physics

Sure, high energy physics costs billions these days (and watch out for birds- and lightning)  but table-top experiments with tuned lasers and sensitive detectors can also continue to achieve the precision necessary for exploring the basic laws of physics a ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 19 2010 - 11:09am

Quantum Repeater- Top Secret Messages Over Long Distances

Quantum cryptography is the technology of the future for military and financial organizations because it sends information as entangled particles of light- anyone who tries to tap into the information changes it in a way that reveals their presence. The da ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 25 2010 - 10:24am

An Invisibility Cloak For Time Also?

It's been the decade of metamaterials, with breakthroughs toward an invisibility cloak occurring every few months.   With conventional materials, light typically travels along a straight line, but with metamaterials, scientists can exploit additional ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 16 2010 - 12:12pm

How Warm Is Light? Physicists Create A Bose-Einstein Condensate 'Super-Photon'

Physicists from the University of Bonn have developed a completely new source of light, a Bose-Einstein condensate consisting of photons, something not known to be possible, which may potentially be suitable for designing light sources resembling lasers th ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 26 2010 - 4:00am