New Nanodevices, Not Need Electricity But Light

Physics and engineering Department at Stanford University have demonstrated a device which provide photons and having the same effect as a magnet effect on the electrons. This may lead to a new class of nano-scale devices that use light instead of electricity. This system demonstrates the long-awaited communication device based on light. It Successfully solves a number of problems.

Since photons have no electric charge and they are free to work, even in high magnetic fields. But soon all that could change. In a paper published in Nature Photonics, interdisciplinary team of Stanford University report that they created a device that can control the flow of photons due to the synthetic magnetism. The result may seem completely new devices that use light instead of electricity – from microscopes to accelerators and ultra fast microchips.

“It is a new way to control light fluxes. It represents unprecedented opportunities for photonic devices”, – said the Shanghai Fan, a professor of electrical engineering, senior author of the study.

The possibility of using magnetic fields to control the electrons – the fundamental principle of modern electronics. But the analogy to photons had never existed. When an electron is close to the magnetic field, it meets a restoring force and follow the path of least resistance – makes a circular motion around the field. Similarly, the new device sends photons in a circular motion around the artificial magnetic field.

Standford Steve solution uses the latest research in the field of photonic crystals – nano scale materials that can “lock” the photons within their imperfections. In this case, the researchers used to form a network of tiny photonic crystal cavities in silicon.

Experimenters have learned to change the radius of the trajectory of a photon and changing the electric current supplied to the photonic crystal and the driving speed of the photons in the system. This dual mechanism allows for exact control.

Process, at first, denied the CPT theorem, invariance of interactions combined parity and time reversal. For engineers, this means that a photon moving forward will contain different properties when it is going backwards. And it gives new and promising technical capabilities.

“Violation of this symmetry is very important because it opens up new ways to control the light. We can, such as, to exclude the photons move back, thus eliminating reflections” – says Kizhay Fang, who is doctoral student in physics at the University of Stanford and first author of the study.

In the future, this property means that we can prevent the loss of the signal that is common trouble of all kinds of electronic optics, and other mechanisms controlling light.

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Posted by Paracha on December 2, 2012. Filed under Innovation, News, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.