For the first time, Harvard researchers have created wakes of light-like waves moving on a metallic surface, called surface plasmons, and demonstrated that they can be controlled and steered. The creation and control of surface plasmon wakes could lead to new types of plasmonic couplers and lenses that could create two-dimensional holograms or focus light at the nanoscale.
[...] Surface plasmons are confined to the surface of a metal. In order to create wakes through them, Capasso's team designed a faster-than-light running wave of charge along a one-dimensional metamaterial — like a powerboat speeding across a lake.
The metamaterial, a nanostructure of rotated slits etched into a gold film, changes the phase of the surface plasmons generated at each slit relative to each other, increasing the velocity of the running wave. The nanostructure also acts like the boat's rudder, allowing the wakes to be steered by controlling the speed of the running wave.
The team discovered that the angle of incidence of the light shining onto the metamaterial provides an additional measure of control and using polarized light can even reverse the direction of the wake relative to the running wave — like a wake traveling in the opposite direction of a boat.
Original Submission
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2015, @07:49AM
On a light wake I ride
I'm wanted
Dead and alive
Wanted, Dead and Alive
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Thursday July 09 2015, @08:07AM
Nope. Just dead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2015, @08:29AM
Because you observed it.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Thursday July 09 2015, @08:26AM
Now the only problem to be solved for FTL travel is: how the hell do we fill the space with nanostructures of rotated slits etched into a gold films?
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2015, @08:31AM
Transmute the aether with virtual particles. Duh. What do you think a warp field generator does.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2015, @12:44PM
That's just physics!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2015, @06:10PM
You forgot to reverse the polarity in the verteron flux! If you don't do that, you stand a high probability of losing containment unless you reroute to auxiliary and compensate for chronoton instability.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2015, @02:04PM
Isn't that tantamount to faster than light information flow? I thought that was impossible.
(Score: 4, Informative) by M. Baranczak on Thursday July 09 2015, @03:07PM
(Score: 1) by JBanister on Friday July 10 2015, @07:00AM
The article said
While nothing travels faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, light isn't always in a vacuum. It is possible for something to move faster than the phase velocity of light in a medium or material and generate a wake. The most famous example of this is Cherenkov radiation, wakes produced as electrical charges travel through liquids faster than the phase velocity of light, emitting a glowing blue wake.
For the first time, Harvard researchers have created similar wakes of light-like waves moving on a metallic surface, called surface plasmons, and demonstrated that they can be controlled and steered.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday July 09 2015, @08:05PM
two-dimensional holograms
Two dimensional holograms? What's the point of that?!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk