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posted by janrinok on Thursday March 06 2014, @10:24PM   Printer-friendly
from the I-wasn't-expecting-that dept.

Detective_Thorn writes:

"A team of researchers from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science in Japan has identified unexpected dynamic properties of a type of light waves called evanescent waves. These surprising findings contrast sharply with previous knowledge about light and photons.

'Such extraordinary properties, revealed in very basic objects, offer a unique opportunity to investigate and observe fundamental physical features, which were previously hidden in usual propagating light and were considered impossible', says Dr. Konstantin Bliokh, first author of the study. 'In addition to a detailed theoretical analysis, we propose and simulate numerically four novel experiments for the detection of the unusual momentum and spin properties of evanescent waves via their interaction with small probe particles', he adds.

These results add a new chapter to the physics of momentum and spin of classical and quantum fields, and predict a number of novel light-matter interaction effects involving evanescent waves.

The report can be found here"

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by martyb on Thursday March 06 2014, @10:53PM

    by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 06 2014, @10:53PM (#12280) Journal

    If you, like me, had not heard of them before, here's the wiki page for evanescent wave [wikipedia.org].

    --
    Wit is intellect, dancing.
  • (Score: 4, Funny) by frojack on Thursday March 06 2014, @10:55PM

    by frojack (1554) on Thursday March 06 2014, @10:55PM (#12281) Journal

    Light seems to be one of those things that is so ubiquitous yet so misunderstood. And asking your physics buddies for help leaves you further confused as they wax all Sheldon Cooper on you, selling you photons and waves in the same breath.

    Now we are told its Evanescent, which I think is what Sheldon's overly religious mom said.

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    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07 2014, @03:29AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07 2014, @03:29AM (#12453)
    How much force and torque?

    How many watts of light to get 1 newton of force?

    e.g. might it be viable for making things fly?
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by threedigits on Friday March 07 2014, @08:11AM

    by threedigits (607) on Friday March 07 2014, @08:11AM (#12545)

    From TFA:

    evanescent waves carry momentum and spin components that are orthogonal to the direction of wave propagation. Moreover, the transverse spin turns out to be independent of polarization and helicity, while the transverse momentum is proportional to the wave helicity.

    Looks like the process of generating the evanscent waves implies somehow the transfer from momentum to spin(helicity) and vice versa. That's interesting, as it will make measuring those properties easier, but also creating light beams with very interesting properties.