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Mastering Light
thyristor writes "'Researchers at MIT document the ultimate control over light: a way to shift the frequency of light beams to any desired colour, with near 100 per cent efficiency. This technology could revolutionise a range of fields, from turning heat into light, or even into prized terahertz rays - which hold great promise for medical imaging. It could also make it possible to focus a wide range of frequencies into a narrow band, make devices such as light bulbs and solar cells more efficient, and help to keep optical telecommunications networks moving.' These are probably the most exciting results in photonics in the last decade."
This would actually be pretty cool for the average DJ or night club, since traditional filters are so inefficient, and thus cause you to use higher wattage light, and more heat (and more AC to deal with it). This could make club lighting more attractive, more sophisticated and more varied.
:-)
After all, if science can't help drunk/horny/single people get laid, what good is it?
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have you ever looked through a Hoya R72 infrared filter, or a B+W 58ES 403 ultraviolet-transmitting filter?
I flat panel displays will no longer need separate reg, green and blue pixels. They could just have uniform pixels which could produce light in any shade required. Should be good for higher resolution displays, greater colour depth. But might mess up things like sub pixel rendering.
http://grc.com/cleartype.htm
"Taligent is still pure vapor. Maybe they'll be the last who jumps up on Openstep... "
The researchers worked out that if a photonic crystal is designed in a certain way, incoming light can get trapped at the shock wave boundary, bouncing back and forth between the compressed part of the crystal and the uncompressed part, in a "hall of mirrors" effect.
Could this be the starting point for some sort of photonic condensator? Maybe, this could in turn be used for building a volatile photonic memory system?
That would mean a great leap in photo-electronic computer systems, since normally, a lot of the speedup from using optics in systems is lost due to slow(er) memory. But maybe the quality of the signal degrades too fast to be usable, afterall 0.1 nanosecond is hardly usable in most cases. Maybe somebody knows more about photo-electonics to figure this one out?
I think the summary's mention of "near 100% efficiency" is misleading. It all depends on how wide your definition of the system is. Yes, technically the material itself appears to be highly efficient, but that's discounting all the energy used creating the shockwave necessary to give the material these properties.
A fascinating discovery, yes, but a miraculous way to convert energy to suit our needs it is not.
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I'd be curious to know the breadth of the effect (possibly limited to those wavelengths that can be captured by photonic crystals?). I mean, visible light is only a very small part of the EM spectrum. http://www.lbl.gov/MicroWorlds/ALSTool/EMSpec/EMSp ec2.html
Could this effect mean one could upshift radio waves to hard xrays? Or microwaves to gamma rays? The idea that this can be done with nearly 100% efficiency is the biggest wow-factor and seems like it should be violating the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
-Styopa
Hmmm.
This research could point the way for automotive lighting systems that are far more efficient than today's lights but use a tiny fraction of its power.
Already, we've seen LED taillights on a number of cars such as the Nissan Skyline (as the Infiniti G35 is known in most of the world). This research could lead to LED-based automobile headlights that are just as bright as the high-intensity discharge (HID) xenon headlights found on more expensive automobiles but doesn't need the expensive power generating system HID headlights now need and uses a tiny fraction of the power needed for regular headlights. Other lighting systems such as fog lights could benefit from these new technologies, too.
laser pointers? hell, i can't wait for the next-generation light sabers!
I agree with your 100% efficiency statement -- it clearly would violate the 2nd law of Thermodynamics...
I found the news article to be a little unclear on this point: Are they talking about energy efficiency; or, conversion efficiency?
I doubt this effect will work with continuous beams. The wavelength shift is based on the Doppler effect, i.e. the light shifts in frequency because the crystal is getting smaller. At some point the crystal has to get larger again, or be destroyed. If the crystal is driven by an acoustic wave, it will oscillate in size, and therefore, the frequency shift will have an oscillatory behaviour in time.
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Well, the superheterodyne radio is not exactly new you know. It's been used for almost 100 years now...
You forgot X-rays... Now the old gag X-ray glasses could become a reality!
Sure, if you can manage to convice whoever you wanted to see through to walk in front of a device spewing x-rays. I don't really know what the attraction would be of seeing someone's skeleton, although it might be cool for a few minutes. It's not like you're going to see through just someone's clothes, unless they're sheer/transparent/over on the floor in the corner, and you don't need special glasses and deadly radiation for that.
Maybe for doctors...but still, there has to be a source for the x-rays, and they're still dangerous. your eyes would be protected...but what about the rest of you?
http://xkcd.com/386/
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