14 DAY TRIAL // In a report recently published in the science journal Optics Express, researchers at the University of Texas El Paso and the University of Central Florida detail the use of a lab-made device to literally bend light and make it steer around tight curves.
Even cooler, the scientists say that the light beams they fired into this device and then watched come out at a nearly perfect 90 degrees angle, as illustrated in the image below, kept both their integrity and their intensity during the experiments.
How exactly did they do it?
The innovative device that the scientists behind this research project used to guide light beams around tight curves without negatively affecting either their integrity or their intensity looked like a honeycomb, albeit an infinitesimal one.
It comprised teeny tiny lattices created by means of direct laser writing, a technology that the researchers describe as similar to D printing but on a nano-scale, and arranged in such ways that they steered light around fairly tight turns without messing with the beams or causing them to lose energy.
This latest series of experiments in bending light is said to have been a world first. Thus, no other team of scientists has until now managed to bend light around such tight curves while at the same time perfectly preserving the beams that they toyed with.
The University of Central Florida researchers, together with their colleagues at the University of Texas El Paso, plan to continue bending light and hope that, soon enough, they will figure out a way to make beams take turns twice as tight as the ones they were introduced to in these latest experiments.
Why such experiments matter
Writing in the journal Optics Express, the scientists who conducted this investigation explain that the goal of research projects such as the one they successfully completed is to pave the way for the development of new electronics that use light to rapidly transmit data.
The researchers detail that, as shown by previous studies, using beams instead of electrical signals would make it possible to transmit bits and pieces of information thousands of times faster. The trouble is that, to achieve this, science must find a way to control light without upsetting it.
“Computer chips and circuit boards have metal wire connections within them that transport data signals. One of challenges when using light is figuring out a way to make tight bends so we can replace the metal wiring more effectively,” explains specialist Raymond Rumpf.
