Title | The Perfect Terahertz Beam -- Thanks to the 3-D Printer | |
Date | Thursday July 12 2018, @02:19PM | |
Author | mrpg | |
Topic | ||
from the 240-cps dept. |
Submitted via IRC for Fnord666
[...] "Normal plastic is transparent for terahertz beams, in a similar way as glass is for visible light," explains Prof. Andrei Pimenov from the Institute of Solid State Physics at TU Wien. "However, terahertz waves slow down a little when they pass through plastic. This means that the crests and troughs of the beam become a little displaced -- we call that phase shifting."
This phase shifting can be used to shape a beam. Exactly the same thing happens -- in a much simpler form -- with an optical lens made of glass: when the lens is thicker in the middle than on the edge, a light beam in the middle spends more time in the glass than another beam that simultaneously hits the edge of the lens. The light beams in the middle are therefore more phase delayed than the light beams on the edge. This is exactly what causes the shape of the beam to change; a wider beam of light can be focussed on a single point.
And yet the possibilities are still far from being exhausted. "We didn't just want to map a wide beam to a point. Our goal was to be able to bring any beam into any shape," says Jan Gosporadic, a PhD student in Andrei Pimenov's team.
Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180711122332.htm
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