SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the so-shiny-a-quark-can-see-its-spin dept.
Physicists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) have engineered the lightest optical mirror imaginable. The novel metamaterial is made of a single structured layer that consists only of a few hundred identical atoms. The atoms are arranged in the two dimensional array of an optical lattice formed by interfering laser beams. The research results are the first experimental observations of their kind in an only recently emerging new field of subwavelength quantum optics with ordered atoms. So far, the mirror is the only one of its kind. The results are today published in Nature.
...
The mirror works with identical atoms arranged in a two-dimensional array. They are ordered in a regular pattern with a spacing lower than the optical transition wavelength of the atom, both typical and necessary characteristics of metamaterials. Metamaterials are artificially designed structures with very specific properties that are rarely found naturally. They obtain their properties not from the materials they are made of but from the specific structures they are designed with. The characteristics—the regular pattern and the subwavelength spacing—and their interplay are the two crucial workings behind this novel kind of optical mirror. First of all, the regular pattern and the subwavelength spacing of atoms both suppress a diffuse scattering of light, bundling the reflection into a one-directional and steady beam of light. Second, because of the comparatively close and discrete distance between the atoms, an incoming photon can bounce back and forth between the atoms more than once before it is being reflected. Both effects, the suppressed scattering of light and the bouncing of the photons, lead to an "enhanced cooperative response to the external field," which means in this case: a very strong reflection.
The researchers anticipate the mirror will help study quantum optical phenomena.
Journal Reference:
Jun Rui, David Wei, Antonio Rubio-Abadal, et al. A subradiant optical mirror formed by a single structured atomic layer [$], Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2463-x)
(Score: 3, Touché) by KritonK on Sunday July 19 2020, @10:36AM
I don't know about it being the lightest imaginable. I can imagine a mirror that is only one atom thick. Hey, I can even imagine doing away with atoms altogether, and having a mirror made of Star Trek-like force fields that weighs absolutely nothing. Doesn't mean that the thing can actually be made, but I sure can imagine it.