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News tagged with optical

Two stopped light pulses interact with each other

(Phys.org) -- For the first time, physicists have experimentally demonstrated the interaction of two motionless light pulses. Because the stopped light pulses have a long interaction time, it increases the ...

Physics / General Physics

created May 08, 2012 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (16) | comments 8 | with audio podcast feature

Retroreflector transmits light with negligible power consumption

(Phys.org) -- In free-space optical communications (FSO), data is wirelessly transmitted by light propagating through open space. Among their applications, FSO systems are used for communications between spacecraft ...

Technology / Engineering

created Apr 17, 2012 | popularity 3.3 / 5 (6) | comments 2 | with audio podcast feature

Trade-off coding for quantum communication provides more benefits than previously thought

(Phys.org) -- In optical communication systems, the overall performance depends on the strategy used to transmit photons from one location to another. In previous attempts to optimize this performance, scientists ...

Physics / Quantum Physics

created Apr 16, 2012 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (9) | comments 0 | with audio podcast feature

Lenses can bend light and sound in almost any direction

(PhysOrg.com) -- When an optical fiber is bent by 90° or more, the light begins to leak away, posing a problem for fiber optics communications. But by using special lenses that can bend light by not only ...

Physics / Optics & Photonics

created Apr 02, 2012 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (12) | comments 17 | with audio podcast feature

LED's efficiency exceeds 100%

(PhysOrg.com) -- For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that an LED can emit more optical power than the electrical power it consumes. Although scientifically intriguing, the results won’t ...

Physics / General Physics

created Mar 05, 2012 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (65) | comments 60 | with audio podcast report

Fast photon control brings quantum photonic technologies closer

(PhysOrg.com) -- Using photons instead of electrons to transmit information could lead to faster and more secure ways to communicate, among other advantages. Now a team of physicists has taken another step toward realizing ...

Physics / Optics & Photonics

created Feb 13, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (9) | comments 2 | with audio podcast feature

Scientists design solar cells that exceed the conventional light-trapping limit

(PhysOrg.com) -- The best performing solar cells are those that are thick enough to absorb light from the entire solar spectrum, while the cheapest solar cells are thin ones, since they require less, and potentially ...

Nanotechnology / Nanophysics

created Jan 20, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (37) | comments 27 | with audio podcast feature

Light-controlling artificial diamond structures could lead to optical computers

(PhysOrg.com) -- In an effort to make computer chips even faster than those of today, many researchers have recently been investigating the possibility of optical computing. In an optical computer, information ...

Physics / General Physics

created Nov 17, 2011 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (10) | comments 3 | with audio podcast report

Scientists solve mystery of the eye

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have a good overall understanding of human vision: when light enters our eyes, it is focused by the lens and strikes the retina in the back of the eye. The light causes some of ...

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created Nov 17, 2011 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (64) | comments 14 | with audio podcast feature

Physicists store short movies in an atomic vapor

The storage of light-encoded messages on film and compact disks and as holograms is ubiquitous---grocery scanners, Netflix disks, credit-card images are just a few examples. And now light signals can be stored ...

Physics / Quantum Physics

created May 29, 2012 | popularity 4 / 5 (5) | comments 4 | with audio podcast

Reversible doping: Hydrogen flips switch on vanadium oxide

If you are not a condensed matter physicist, vanadium oxide (VO2) may be the coolest material you've never heard of. It's a metal. It's an insulator. It's a window coating and an optical switch. And thanks ...

Physics / Condensed Matter

created May 21, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Graphene found to emit infrared light

(Phys.org) -- Ever since its discovery in 2004, graphene, the honey-comb arranged sheet of one atom thick carbon atoms, has continued to make waves in both the physics and engineering worlds. Now comes news ...

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Apr 26, 2012 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (15) | comments 11 | with audio podcast report

Computing the best high-resolution 3-D tissue images

Real-time, 3-D microscopic tissue imaging could be a revolution for medical fields such as cancer diagnosis, minimally invasive surgery and ophthalmology. University of Illinois researchers have developed ...

Physics / General Physics

created Apr 23, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (5) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Physicists turn to Maxwell’s equations for self-bending light

(Phys.org) -- Can light self-bend into an arc? Can shape-preserving optical beams truly bend along a circular path? A confident answer emerged in this week’s Physical Review Letters. Researchers at Israel’s Techni ...

Physics / General Physics

created Apr 21, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (30) | comments 27 | with audio podcast weblog

Quantum internet: Physicists build first elementary quantum network

(Phys.org) -- A team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics realizes a first elementary quantum network based on interfaces between single atoms and photons.

Physics / Quantum Physics

created Apr 11, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (22) | comments 2 | with audio podcast