Science Daily June 12, 2018 An international team of researchers (Sweden USA – Purdue University) reports the first coherent-transmission experiments using 64-quadrature amplitude modulation encoded onto the frequency lines of a dark-pulse comb. The high conversion efficiency of the comb enables transmitted optical signal-to-noise ratios above 33 dB, while maintaining a laser pump power level compatible with state-of-the-art hybrid silicon lasers. The research helps to better understand the formation of dark pulses in microresonators and their potential use in optical communications. The research could lead to faster and more power-efficient optical communication links in the future… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL […]
A nanotech sensor that turns molecular fingerprints into bar codes
Eurekalert June 7, 2018 The system developed by an international team of researchers (Switzerland, Australia) consists of an engineered surface covered with hundreds of tiny sensors (metapixels) each one resonating at a different frequency. Different vibrational frequencies are mapped to different areas on the surface which creates a pixelated map of light absorption that can be translated into a molecular bar code – all without using a spectrometer. They have used the system to detect polymers, pesticides and organic compounds. It is highly sensitive and generates bar codes even with broadband light sources and detectors. Applications include portable medical testing […]
New approach to generating ultrashort laser pulses
Nanowerk June 8, 2018 An international team of researchers (USA – MIT, The Ohio State University, Germany) used an optical parametric amplifier to produce pulses which cover different spectral ranges and whose amplitudes and phases can be fixed relative to one another. The amplifier has a very short time delay between the two pulses so that they combine into a wide-bandwidth pulse with no need for noise control. The pulse could be made even shorter than the period of the wave because constructive interference occurs at its center, while destructive interference ‘trims’ the pulse at its edges. When the pulses […]
New laser makes silicon ‘sing’
Eurekalert June 7, 2018 To amplify silicon laser with sound, a team of researchers in the US (Yale University, Northern Arizona University, UT Austin) used a nanoscale waveguide that is designed to tightly confine both light and sound waves and maximize their interaction. The waveguide has two distinct channels for light to propagate which allows shaping of the light-sound coupling in a way that permits remarkably robust and flexible laser designs. While the system is clearly an optical laser, it also generates very coherent hypersonic waves. According to the researchers these properties may lead to several potential applications ranging from […]
Novel transmitter protects wireless devices from hackers
Eurekalert June 7, 2018 Researchers at MIT have developed an ultrafast frequency hopping transmitter that frequency hops every microsecond and a protocol to support the ultrafast frequency hopping. The transmitter leverages BAW resonators and rapidly switches between a wide range of RF channel. They replaced a crystal oscillator with an oscillator based on a BAW resonator and incorporated components that divide an input frequency into multiple frequencies creating a host of new radio frequencies that can span about 80 channels. Their work will be presented at the IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium… read more.
Photonics – Getting into the groove
Nanowerk June 8, 2018 An international team of researchers (Singapore, UK, Saudi Arabia, Germany) fabricated, analyzed and modeled a system consisting of the nano-grooved gold film topped with an atomically thin flake of tungsten selenide. The result was a remarkable 7,000-fold multiplication of second harmonic generation (SHG) by which two photons combine to produce a single photon with double the energy. They were able to combine the advantages of both materials to achieve a flexible, ultra-compact, and efficient device for SHG, with potential applications for optical frequency doubling in nanoscale devices… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Scientists find ordered magnetic patterns in disordered magnetic material
Science Daily June 8, 2018 A team of researchers in the US (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UC Berkeley) has generalized the concept of chirality driven by interfacial the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction (DMI) to complex multicomponent systems and demonstrated on the example of chiral ferrimagnetism in amorphous GdCo films. They found that 2 nm thick GdCo films preserve ferrimagnetism and stabilize chiral domain walls. The type of chiral domain walls depends on the rare‐earth composition/saturation magnetization. The success of the experiments opens the possibility of controlling some properties of domain walls, such as chirality, with temperature, and of switching a material’s chiral […]
Senate bill would direct DOD to create a quantum computing consortium
Fed Scoop June 8, 2018 The consortium would be a partnership of various defense, federal, industry and academic research entities selected by the chief of the Office of Naval Research in the eastern half of the nation and the director of the Army Research Laboratory in the western half. Those two would oversee the consortium with the assistant director for quantum information science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and other experts. The board would award grants, facilitate partnerships and assist in quantum information science research within the group… read more.
Universal migration predicts human movements under climate change
Physics World June 12, 2018 An international team of researchers (USA – Columbia University, The Nature Conservancy, North Carolina State University, UC Berkeley, Italy) modified a diffusion-based model of human mobility in combination with population, geographic, and climatic data to estimate the sources, destinations, and flux of potential migrants as driven by sea level rise (SLR) in Bangladesh in the years 2050 and 2100. By linking the sources of migrants displaced by SLR with their likely destinations, they demonstrated an effective approach for predicting climate-driven migrant flows, especially in data-limited settings… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Top 10 Science and Technology Innovations for the Week of June 08, 2018
01. Prototype nuclear battery packs 10 times more power 02. Researchers achieve almost instant magnetization of matter by light 03. The right squeeze for quantum computing 04. Time crystals may hold secret to coherence in quantum computing 05. Wood to supercapacitors 06. Aerial robot that can morph in flight 07. Building nanomaterials for next-generation computing 08. Plastic crystals hold key to record-breaking energy transport 09. Novel insulators with conducting edges 10. Researchers develop electronic skins that wirelessly activate fully soft robots And others.. Better, faster, stronger: Building batteries that don’t go boom A fresh sensation in sensing technology From face […]