Sensitive UV Detector Ignores Visible Light

techmaven writes: "Scientists at Northwestern University have developed a new device that detects ultraviolet light and at the same time ignores visible light. The researchers said that the new detector could lead to a UV light detector approximately 10 times more sensitive than those now on the Hubble Space Telescope, allowing astronomers to observe important objects throughout the universe for the first time."

Comments

Radical improvement-

[purduephotog]

In the world of detectors an order of magnitude is about the only thing worth talking about.

Going from 5% efficiency to anything better than 10% would be an incredible leap. The filters they talk about are 'cutting' filters - you create them by depositing thin films of MgF or other salts on the surface of a piece of optical glass- multiple coats builds up a pass region while allowing destructive interferance to cancle out what you don't want.

The advantage is these can be turned sideways 45 degrees to 'reflect' the unwanted light to another detector (or in the case of IR, into a heat sink to dump it), but it also distorts the signal. Better to reflect it straight back.

This also has the advantage of going to fiber as well- encode a UV signal into a fiber optic (assuming your refraction index is high enough) and you can double or triple bandwidth.

It truly is a very important work - now if they can get it to work at 'space' temperatures and hard vaccuum ;P