Cloaked Objects: Invisibility Visualized Nov 13, 2009
Refractive index profile and corresponding ray-tracing image of the simplified cloak. (Credit: J.C. Halimeh, T. Ergin, J. Mueller, N. Stenger, and M. Wegener. (Science Daily)
Flipping A Photonic Shock Wave Nov 11, 2009
(Top left) Schematic of Cerenkov radiation in a conventional natural medium with positive refractive index, such as water, in which the radiation falls in a cone in the forward direction. (Bottom left) Schematic of backward Cerenkov radiation in a left-handed medium, showing the reversed cone. (Science Daily)
Physicists Develop Multifunctional Storage Device For Light Oct 20, 2009
The resulting mechanical tension changes the refractive index of the glass, so that depending on the tension, the round-trip of the light is lengthened or shortened. Because of its exceptional characteristics and its simple design based on glass-fiber technology, the bottle resonator opens up numerous areas of application. (Science Daily)
Toward Making Smart Phone Touch-screens More Glare And Smudge Resistant Sep 18, 2009
Anti-reflective coatings need alternating layers, which have differences in their refractive index (RI), a measure of how fast light travels through a material. Fluorocarbons in general have low RI and they offer anti-smudge properties. (Science Daily)
Fujitsu Optical Components and Furukawa Electric to Jointly Develop Integrated Receivers for 40Gbps and 100Gbps Optical Networks Aug 19, 2009
Tokyo, Aug 18, 2009 - (JCN Newswire) - Fujitsu Optical Components Limited and Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. today announced to jointly develop 40Gbps and 100Gbps integrated receivers. 40Gbps receivers will be used in 40Gbps optical networks whose deployment is growing constantly on a global scale; 100Gbps receivers will be used for next-generation 100Gbps optical networks. (JCN Network, Japan)
New Cloaking Method Could Shield Submarines From Sonar, Planes From Radar, Buildings From Earthquakes Aug 18, 2009
This device made use of metamaterials that had a negative refractive index. (Jan. (Science Daily)
Beyond the looking glass Aug 13, 2009
Dr Huanyang Chen from the Physics Department at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has commented, "In the frequency range in which the metamaterial possesses a negative refraction index, people standing outside the gateway would see something like a mirror. Whether it can block all visible light depends on whether one can make a metamaterial that has a negative refractive index from 300 to 800 nanometres.". Metamaterials, the area of physics research behind the possible creation of a... (EurekAlert!)
Fujitsu Introduces Compact Integrated DPSK Receiver for 40Gbps Optical Networks Aug 12, 2009
The conventional method used in adjusting the phase of the delay line interferometer was to thermally control the optical component to change the refractive index. Maintaining low power consumption remained a challenge. (JCN Network, Japan)
Device Guides Light Around Corners Aug 1, 2009
This device made use of metamaterials that had a negative refractive index. (May 4, 2007) A unique computer model designed by a mathematician has shown that it is possible to make objects, such as airplanes and submarines, appear invisible at close. (Science Daily)
Physicists Find Way To Explore Microscopic Systems Through Holographic Video Jul 31, 2009
Then measurements of the particle's position, size, and refractive index are obtained. (Credit: Image courtesy of New York University). (Science Daily)
Testing Relativity, Black Holes In The Lab Jul 21, 2009
This material provided operation at the infrared spectral range and featured a high refractive index with low absorptions. In their paper, Zhang and his coauthors cite as a particularly intriguing prospect for applying artificial optical materials to the optical-mechanical analogy the study of the phenomenon known as chaos. (Science Daily)
New fabricated material changes color instantly in response to external magnetic field Jun 17, 2009
"Conventional methods to produce tunable structural color rely on changing the periodicity of the array or the refractive index of the materials changes that are difficult to achieve or involve slow processes," he said. "In our method, the color is tuned by changing the relative orientation of the periodic arrays in the microspheres by conveniently using external fields. The use of magnetic fields as external stimuli has the additional benefits of instant action, contactless control and easy... (EurekAlert!)
Cloaking Made Simpler, but Invisible Humans Not Yet a Reality May 29, 2009
Looking for a simpler way, the researchers realized that they could custom-design waveguides to mimic the properties of metamaterials, specifically the gradient of the material's refractive index, a measure of the speed at which light passes through. The result, Shalaev says, allows light to bend around the central cloaked area "like water flows around a stone.". (Scientific American)
Liquid lens creates tiny flexible laser on a chip May 12, 2009
There are also a number of commercially available "refractive index fluids" which could potentially provide better optical properties and make these Liquid-Gradient Refractive Index (L-GRIN) lenses work even better. Huang, working with engineering science and mechanics graduate students Sz-Chin Steven Lin, Michael I. Lapsley, Jinjie Shi and Bala Krishna Juluri and bioengineering graduate student Xiaole Mao, who is the first author on the paper, reported their work in a recent issue of Lab on a... (EurekAlert!)
GE holographic disk said to top 500 Gbytes Apr 29, 2009
"We created a material in which the refractive index can be changed when exposed to high laser power.". Standard CDs and DVDs use low-power lasers to read disks (about 1 milliwatt), then switch to high-power mode (about 50 milliwatts) for recording, which essentially introduces microscopic damage that reduces the reflectivity of the disk. (EETimes)
Nanocups Brim With Potential Mar 20, 2009
19, 2009) Researchers at Rice University have created a metamaterial that could light the way toward high-powered optics, ultra-efficient solar cells and even cloaking devices. Naomi Halas, an award-winning pioneer in nanophotonics, and graduate student Nikolay Mirin created a material that collects light from any direction and emits it in a single direction. (Science Daily)
Designer Focuses on Marketing Adjustable Eyeglasses at $1 a Pair Feb 25, 2009
The glasses, developed by Silver and offered by his company, Oxford-based , are round plastic frames with lenses made of clear sacs of silicon oil (the sort most commonly found in vacuum pumps that also happens to have a high refractive index) sandwiched between two clear plastic circles. They're not un-Harry Potter like in appearance, but their effectiveness lies in a simple fundamental concept. (Scientific American)
Nanoscopic changes to pancreatic cells reveal cancer Feb 13, 2009
The new technique works by detecting fluctuations in the cells' refractive index (an optical property that measures how cells bend light passing through them) ... The more architectural disorder there is inside the cell, the more the refractive index fluctuates ... Paper: "Partial wave microscopic spectroscopy detects sub-wavelength refractive index fluctuations: an application to cancer diagnosis," Hariharan Subramanian et al., Optics Letters, Vol. 34, No. 4, Feb. 15, 2009. (EurekAlert!)
