Phys.org June 24, 2022 An international team of researchers (South Africa, Mexico, Scotland) demonstrated that “distortion” is a matter of perspective, outlining a simple rule that applies to all light and a vast array of media, including underwater, optical fiber, transmission in the atmosphere and even through living biological samples. They showed that despite the distortion the “vectorness” of light remains unchanged, invariant to the media. It holds the key exploiting light even under non-ideal conditions. The team’s approach allows researchers to identify how to correct any distortions through the media without loss of light. According to the researchers their […]
Author Archives: Hema Viswanath
A mirror tracks a single nanoparticle
Nanowerk June 29, 2022 Interferometric methods for detecting the motion of a levitated nanoparticle provide a route to the quantum ground state, but such methods are currently limited by mode mismatch between the reference beam and the dipolar field scattered by the particle. An international team of researchers (Austria, UK) has demonstrated a self-interference method to detect the particle’s motion that solves this problem. They confined a charged dielectric nanoparticle in high vacuum using a Paul trap and a mirror retro-reflected the scattered light. They measured the particle’s motion with a sensitivity of 1.7×10−12m/√Hz, corresponding to a detection efficiency of […]
New single-mode semiconductor laser delivers power with scalability
Phys.org June 29, 2022 A team of researchers in the US (UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) created a new type of semiconductor laser, dubbed Berkeley Surface Emitting Lasers (BerkSELs), that can maintain a single mode of emitted light while maintaining the ability to scale up in size and power. The BerkSEL design enabled the single-mode light emission because of the physics of the light passing through the holes in the membrane, a 200-nanometer-thick layer of indium gallium arsenide phosphide. The periodic holes in the membrane became Dirac points. By eliminating the need for external amplification, they could shrink the […]
Novel gel proves itself to be a highly tunable color filter
Phys.org June 27, 2022 A team of researchers in the US (NIST, University of Delaware) has developed a gel, they call “SeedGel’ which has the capability as a temperature-sensitive light filter. When white light is shone at the gel, depending on the gel’s temperature, only a specific wavelength will pass through it. A temperature change of less than a tenth of a degree Celsius can be enough to alter the permitted wavelength, which can be any color in the visible range as well as parts of the ultraviolet and infrared. The gel is made of water and liquid solvents with […]
Novel microfluidic chip can detect contaminants in 100-picoliter samples
Nanowerk June 27, 2022 Researchers in Japan have developed a nonlinear optical crystal-based compact terahertz (THz)-microfluidic chip with several I-design meta-atoms for attomole (amol)-level sensing of trace amounts of solution samples. The chip consists of a metallic strip with a micrometer-sized gap sandwiched by other metallic strips. A point THz source locally generated by optical rectification at the irradiation spot of a femtosecond-pulse laser beam induced a tightly confined electric-field mode at the gap regions and modified the resonance frequency when a microchannel fabricated along the space between the metallic strips was filled with solutions. Using this chip, they could […]
Online platform designed to improve reproducibility, scientific collaborations
Phys.org June 24, 2022 Reproducibility is a significant challenge in (epi)genomic research due to the complexity of experiments composed of traditional biochemistry and informatics. Recent advances have exacerbated this as high-throughput sequencing data is generated at an unprecedented pace. A team of researchers in the US (Pennsylvania State University, Cornell University) has developed a Platform for Epi-Genomic Research (PEGR), a web-based project management platform that tracks and quality controls experiments from conception to publication-ready figures, compatible with multiple assays and bioinformatic pipelines. It supports rigor and reproducibility for biochemists working at the bench, while fully supporting reproducibility and reliability for […]
Quantum network nodes with warm atoms
Science Daily June 24, 2022 An international team of researchers (Switzerland, Germany) built and successfully interfaced a single-photon source based on cavity-enhanced spontaneous parametric down-conversion in periodically poled potassium titanyl phosphate and a matched memory based on electromagnetically induced transparency in warm 87Rb vapor. The bandwidth of the photons emitted by the source was 370MHz, which is within the accepted bandwidth of the memory. The experimental complexity was kept low, with all components operating at or above room temperature. Read-out noise of the memory was considerably reduced by exploiting polarization selection rules in the hyperfine structure of spin-polarized atoms. They […]
Review suggests current global efforts are insufficient to limit warming to 1.5°C
Phys.org June 24, 2022 According to researchers in Canada human activities have caused global temperatures to increase by 1.25°C, and the current emissions trajectory suggests that we will exceed 1.5°C in less than 10 years. Though the growth rate of global carbon dioxide emissions has slowed, and many countries have strengthened their emissions targets, current midcentury net zero goals are insufficient to limit global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial temperatures. The primary barriers to the achievement of a 1.5°C-compatible pathway are not geophysical but rather reflect inertia in our political and technological systems. Both political and corporate leadership are needed […]
Robot overcomes uncertainty to retrieve buried objects
MIT News June 28, 2022 Researchers at MIT have built a prototype of a robotic system for RF-Visual mechanical search that leverages the mere existence of an RF-tagged item in the pile to benefit both tagged and untagged items. The two key innovations. RF-Visual Mapping, a technique that identifies and locates RF-tagged items in a pile and uses this information to construct an RF-Visual occupancy distribution map. The second innovation is RF-Visual Extraction, a policy formulated as an optimization problem that minimizes the number of actions required to extract the target object. In over 180 real-world experimental trials FuseBot outperformed […]
Spray-n-Sense: Spray-painting sensors on any surface
Nanowerk June 27, 2022 An international team of researchers (Australia, Saudi Arabia) has demonstrated a sprayable on-site sensing tool, Spry-n-Sense, which consists of chromogen-doped polymer that is sprayed out in the form of nanofibers using a simple nebulization method. The nebulization method allows for nanofibers to be sprayed onto any surface. The sprayable nanofibers sensors only require compressed gas, making it possible to spray nanofibers even on non-conducting surfaces. The application performs on-site image analysis of the visually quantifiable color or fluorescence changes on the area of analyte exposure by calculating relative pixel intensity per ppm from photographs of the […]