Tag Archives: Photonics

Reducing Persistence ofAntibiotic Resistance

Posted on February 23, 2024 by rberkowitz

A light-based technique can make bacteria more susceptible to antibiotics, and it is nearing clinical trials. Continue reading →

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Sensor Judges Taste of Raw Maple Syrup

Posted on June 15, 2023 by rberkowitz

Climate change is altering late-season maple syrup, but a portable plasmonic sensor could help avoid waste by detecting molecules in a tree’s sap that lead to an off-tasting batch. Continue reading →

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Strobing Light Shapes Atomic Array

Posted on September 14, 2022 by rberkowitz

An optical tweezer with a stroboscopic twist can trap cold atoms in lattices
of all shapes. Continue reading →

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A Tiny Photonic Nose Captures Odor Fingerprints

Posted on August 2, 2022 by rberkowitz

A bio-inspired detector the size of a US penny can identify the unique odor profiles of different gases, something that could help in detecting food freshness and product counterfeits and in designing new cosmetics. Continue reading →

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Curved Light Channels Have Better Coupling

Posted on July 26, 2022 by rberkowitz

More frequencies of light can pass between two coupled wavy waveguides than between two coupled straight ones, something that could allow for more flexible designs of optics-based circuits on silicon chips. Continue reading →

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Extra-Stable Light Produced by Levitated Nanoparticle

Posted on July 26, 2022 by rberkowitz

A trapped nanoparticle interacting with a laser provides a simple way to generate squeezed light, which has an unusually low level of fluctuations. Read more in APS Physics…

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Mirror Image Pinpoints a Nanoparticle’s Position

Posted on June 28, 2022 by rberkowitz

A scattered laser beam’s interaction with itself creates a motion-detection method precise enough to determine whether a trapped particle is in its ground state. Continue reading →

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Unpolarized Light Could Separate Chiral Molecules

Posted on May 4, 2022 by rberkowitz

Numerical simulations suggest that unpolarized light with a twisted phase could help sort left- and right-handed molecules into separate ring-shaped traps. Continue reading →

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Quantum Metasurfaces Entangle Photons on Demand

Posted on July 21, 2021 by rberkowitz

When it’s modulated by laser beams, a surface made of polarizable meta-atoms can entangle a photon’s properties in multiple, controllable ways. Continue reading →

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Optical Fiber Modes Resist Deformations

Posted on June 21, 2021 by rberkowitz

A machine-learning approach quickly characterizes an optical fiber, identifying transmission channels that aren’t affected by deformation. Continue reading →

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