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Surfing a Wake of Light: Researchers Observe and Control Light Wakes for the First Time

posted by martyb on Thursday July 09 2015, @07:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the wave-at-the-camera dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

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.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2015, @02:04PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2015, @02:04PM (#206972)

    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

    by M. Baranczak (1673) on Thursday July 09 2015, @03:07PM (#206999)
    Imagine people doing The Wave in a stadium of arbitrary size. The traditional way to do it: you stand up when you see the people next to you stand up. This means that the wave-propagating process is based on light, so the wave can't be faster than light speed. But you could also create the same effect by equipping each person in the stadium with a timer that tells them when to stand and when to sit. If you do that, then there's no theoretical limit to the speed of the wave. But the wave also wouldn't transmit any information.

  • (Score: 1) by JBanister on Friday July 10 2015, @07:00AM

    by JBanister (5195) on Friday July 10 2015, @07:00AM (#207312) Homepage

    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.