http://phys.org/physics-news/optics-photonics/ en-us Phys.Org provides the latest news on Optics and Photonics A new tool being developed by UT Arlington assistant professor of physics could help scientists map and track the interactions between neurons inside different areas of the brain. http://phys.org/news287937996.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Thu, 16 May 2013 15:46:42 EST news287937996 Engineering researchers at the University of Michigan have demonstrated a paradigm-shifting "polariton" laser that's fueled not by light, but by electricity. http://phys.org/news287851057.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Wed, 15 May 2013 15:37:46 EST news287851057 (Phys.org) —Detecting greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could soon become far easier with the help of an innovative technique developed by a team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where scientists have overcome an issue preventing the effective use of lasers to rapidly scan samples. http://phys.org/news287827779.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Wed, 15 May 2013 09:30:11 EST news287827779 (Phys.org) —Quantum dot LEDs (QLEDs) are a promising technology for creating large-area displays that could have applications for TVs, cell phones, and digital cameras. So far, however, the highest efficiencies of QLEDs have fallen short of those of organic LEDs (OLEDs), another large-area LED technology. Now in a new study, researchers have developed a new type of QLED with an efficiency and luminance that are the highest reported to date and comparable to state-of-the-art phosphorescent OLEDs. The new QLED's external quantum efficiency of 18% more than doubles the current highest value of which the researchers are aware, which is 8%. The efficiency is also close to the theoretical maximum for any planar thin-film LED, which is 20%. http://phys.org/news287764572.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Tue, 14 May 2013 15:40:01 EST news287764572 (Phys.org) —Harnessing the unique features of the quantum world promises a dramatic speed-up in information processing as compared to the fastest classical machines. Scientists from the Group of Philip Walther from the Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna succeeded in prototyping a new and highly resource efficient model of a quantum computer – the boson sampling computer. The results will be published in the upcoming issue of the renowned scientific journal Nature Photonics. http://phys.org/news287650890.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Mon, 13 May 2013 08:20:02 EST news287650890 (Phys.org) —For some solar cells, the future may be fluorescent. Scientists at Yale have improved the ability of a promising type of solar cell to absorb light and convert it into electrical power by adding a fluorescent organic dye to the cell layer. This squaraine dye boosts light absorption and recycles electrons, improving the conversion of light into energy. The results suggest a new route for the development of lower-cost, higher-efficiency photovoltaics, the scientists said. http://phys.org/news287297900.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Thu, 09 May 2013 05:58:29 EST news287297900 An international team of physicists, including researchers from the Universities of York and St. Andrews, has demonstrated that chaos can beat order - at least as far as light storage is concerned. http://phys.org/news287135697.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Tue, 07 May 2013 08:55:04 EST news287135697 (Phys.org) —The new material's artificial "atoms" are designed to work with a broad range of light frequencies. With adjustments, the researchers believe it could lead to perfect microscope lenses or invisibility cloaks. http://phys.org/news287134822.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Tue, 07 May 2013 08:42:05 EST news287134822 Seven years ago, Duke University engineers demonstrated the first working invisibility cloak in complex laboratory experiments. Now it appears creating a simple cloak has become a lot simpler. http://phys.org/news287054955.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Mon, 06 May 2013 10:29:24 EST news287054955 Asbestos was once called a miracle material because of its toughness and fire-resistant properties. It was used as insulation, incorporated into cement and even woven into firemen's protective clothing. Over time, however, scientists pinned the cause of lung cancers such as mesothelioma on asbestos fiber inhalation. Asbestos was banned in the many industrialized countries in the 1980s, but the threat lingers on in the ceilings, walls and floors of old buildings and homes. Now a team of researchers from the University of Hertfordshire in the U.K. has developed and tested the first portable, real-time airborne asbestos detector. They hope that the prototype, described in a paper published today in the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Optics Express, will be commercialized in the U.K. in the next few years, providing roofers, plumbers, electricians and other workers in commercial and residential buildings with an affordable way to quickly identify if they have inadvertently disturbed asbestos fibers into the air. http://phys.org/news286713380.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Thu, 02 May 2013 11:36:29 EST news286713380 By bouncing eye-safe laser pulses off a mirror on a hillside, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have transferred ultraprecise time signals through open air with unprecedented precision equivalent to the "ticking" of the world's best next-generation atomic clocks. http://phys.org/news286640465.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Wed, 01 May 2013 15:21:13 EST news286640465 (Phys.org) —Scientists have discovered how to measure greenhouse gases 200,000 times faster as the result research by an award-winning PhD student from The University of Western Australia and a US team. http://phys.org/news286519208.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Tue, 30 Apr 2013 05:40:27 EST news286519208 (Phys.org) —Researchers have found a way to see synthetic nanostructures and molecules using a new type of super-resolution optical microscopy that does not require fluorescent dyes, representing a practical tool for biomedical and nanotechnology research. http://phys.org/news286479607.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Mon, 29 Apr 2013 18:40:14 EST news286479607 Streetlights illuminate the night, shining upon roadways and sidewalks across the world, but these ubiquitous elements of the urban environment are notoriously inefficient and major contributors to light pollution that washes out the night sky. Recent innovations in light emitting diodes (LEDs) have improved the energy efficiency of streetlights, but, until now, their glow still wastefully radiated beyond the intended area. A team of researchers from Taiwan and Mexico has developed a new lighting system design that harnesses high-efficiency LEDs and ensures they shine only where they're needed, sparing surrounding homes and the evening sky from unwanted illumination. The team reported their findings today in the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Optics Express. http://phys.org/news286021150.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:19:22 EST news286021150 (Phys.org) —Researchers at the University of Rochester have applied a sophisticated imaging technique to obtain the first 3D, high-resolution pictures of a recently developed type of optical lenses. They say that using Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) during the manufacturing process allows them to significantly improve the quality of these new and promising lenses. http://phys.org/news286013205.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:11:07 EST news286013205 (Phys.org) —A Harvard-led team of researchers has created a new type of nanoscale device that converts an optical signal into waves that travel along a metal surface. Significantly, the device can recognize specific kinds of polarized light and accordingly send the signal in one direction or another. http://phys.org/news285867140.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:32:27 EST news285867140 (Phys.org) —Good news for the computer industry: a team of researchers has managed to make germanium suitable for lasers. This could enable microprocessor components to communicate using light in future, which will make the computers of the future faster and more efficient. http://phys.org/news285830489.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Mon, 22 Apr 2013 06:21:36 EST news285830489 (Phys.org) —Researchers at King's College London have achieved previously unseen levels of control over the travelling direction of electromagnetic waves in waveguides. Their ground-breaking results could have far-reaching benefits for the way light is controlled in optical waveguides and fibres, significantly improving integration, efficiency and speed. http://phys.org/news285578852.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Fri, 19 Apr 2013 08:27:48 EST news285578852 (Phys.org) —Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) have found a new mechanism to transmit light through optical fibers. Their discovery marks the first practical application of a Nobel-Prize-winning phenomenon that was proposed in 1958. http://phys.org/news285409990.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Wed, 17 Apr 2013 09:33:18 EST news285409990 Thanks to USB sticks and video streaming, DVD players are becoming all but obsolete. But their cheap optics may find a new life in a cost-effective and speedy technique for on-the-spot HIV testing and other analytics. http://phys.org/news284888243.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Thu, 11 Apr 2013 08:50:01 EST news284888243 The application of light for information processing opens up a multitude of possibilities. However, to be able to adequately use photons in circuits and sensors, materials need to have particular optical and mechanical properties. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have now for the first time used polycrystalline diamond to manufacture optical circuits and have published their results online in Nature Communications. http://phys.org/news284884033.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Thu, 11 Apr 2013 07:27:22 EST news284884033 (Phys.org) —Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed and successfully demonstrated a photonic Floquet topological insulator, a new device used to protect the transport of light through a unique, lattice of 'waveguides.' The advancement may play a key role in the photonics industry. A description is published in the current issue of Nature. http://phys.org/news284839913.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:12:03 EST news284839913 (Phys.org) —A team made up of researchers from the U.K., China and Germany has developed, for the first time, a way to control surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs), perhaps paving the way to integrated plasmonic circuits. In their paper published in Light: Science & Applications, describing their achievement, the team details how they created a metal film with nanometer-sized holes in it set in a certain way to allow for controlling the quasiparticles that arise during the interaction between light and a metal surface. http://phys.org/news284629867.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Mon, 08 Apr 2013 09:20:05 EST news284629867 (Phys.org) —Capture up to 12 times more light to produce more energy? Nanowires do just that and surpass expectations on solar energy production. http://phys.org/news284623179.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Mon, 08 Apr 2013 07:00:02 EST news284623179 (Phys.org) —A standard camera takes flat, 2-D pictures. To get 3-D information, such as the distance to a far-away object, scientists can bounce a laser beam off the object and measure how long it takes the light to travel back to a detector. The technique, called time-of-flight (ToF), is already used in machine vision, navigation systems for autonomous vehicles, and other applications, but many current ToF systems have a relatively short range and struggle to image objects that do not reflect laser light well. A team of Scotland-based physicists has recently tackled these limitations and reported their findings today in the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Optics Express. http://phys.org/news284292984.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Thu, 04 Apr 2013 11:16:36 EST news284292984 (Phys.org) —If you could peek at the inner workings of a computer processor you would see billions of transistors switching back and forth between two states. In optical communications, information from the switches can be encoded onto light, which then travels long distances through glass fiber. Researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering are working to harness the quantum nature of light and semiconductors to expand the capabilities of computers in remarkable ways. http://phys.org/news284028052.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Mon, 01 Apr 2013 09:41:05 EST news284028052 An international team of physicists has proposed a revolutionary laser system, inspired by the telecommunications technology, to produce the next generation of particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). http://phys.org/news283669425.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Thu, 28 Mar 2013 06:03:57 EST news283669425 Electronic computing speeds are brushing up against limits imposed by the laws of physics. Photonic computing, where photons replace comparatively slow electrons in representing information, could surpass those limitations, but the components of such computers require semiconductors that can emit light. http://phys.org/news283602705.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:31:59 EST news283602705 (Phys.org) —A research team at the University of Southampton in England has built a fiber cable that is capable of carrying data at 99.7 percent of the vacuum-speed of light. They have done so, they report in their paper published in the journal Nature Photonics, by constructing a cable with a hollow core and special inner walls that prevent refraction. http://phys.org/news283516879.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Tue, 26 Mar 2013 12:00:01 EST news283516879 Scientists from the Nano-Science Center at the Niels Bohr Institut, Denmark and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, have shown that a single nanowire can concentrate the sunlight up to 15 times of the normal sun light intensity. The results are surprising and the potential for developing a new type of highly efficient solar cells is great. http://phys.org/news283335371.html Physics - Optics & Photonics Sun, 24 Mar 2013 14:00:01 EST news283335371