{"id":13603,"date":"2017-11-10T07:12:53","date_gmt":"2017-11-10T07:12:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=13603"},"modified":"2017-11-10T07:12:53","modified_gmt":"2017-11-10T07:12:53","slug":"new-theory-open-potent-new-applications-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/new-theory-open-potent-new-applications-light\/","title":{"rendered":"New theory could open potent new applications for light"},"content":{"rendered":"
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UW\u2013Madison electrical engineers have devised a new fundamental understanding that someday could lead to vast improvements in such things as the strength of cellphone signals. PIXABAY<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One bar, two bars \u2014 it\u2019s an all-too-common problem. You\u2019re in a large building, driving in a remote area, or even right in the middle of a big city, but you can\u2019t stream video, check email or even make a phone call \u2014 because your cellular signal is weak.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the future may be different. University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison electrical engineers have devised a new fundamental understanding that someday could lead to vast improvements in devices that gather or deliver information at any wavelength.<\/span><\/p>\n

Led by\u00a0Zongfu Yu<\/a>, professor of electrical and computer engineering at UW\u2013Madison, the researchers published details of their theory in the Nov. 9, 2017, issue of the journal\u00a0Nature Communications<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Zongfu Yu<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Their research centers on a phenomenon known as electromagnetic scattering.<\/span><\/p>\n

The electromagnetic spectrum includes everything from gamma rays, which have very short wavelengths, to the long wavelengths of radio waves. Visible light falls right in the middle. Every day, we interact with some aspect of the electromagnetic spectrum. For example, we see stars in the sky. We might have a dental X-ray, heat food in a microwave oven, or listen to news on an AM radio.<\/span><\/p>\n

Each of these is a form of electromagnetic radiation \u2014 energy that travels and spreads, or radiates. When radiating energy, such as light, collides with any particle, the particle affects the direction the light travels. That\u2019s known as scattering.<\/span><\/p>\n

Conversely, a device\u2019s cross section determines how much of that scattered electromagnetic radiation it can detect. For example, your phone\u2019s antenna dictates what mobile signals it can detect.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a fundamental law that governs the scattering strengths and its relation to wavelengths,\u201d says Yu. \u201cThat\u2019s why we see the blue sky, that\u2019s why we see the red sunset, and that\u2019s why our cell phone antenna is a certain size and we can\u2019t make it smaller.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In their research, Yu and his collaborators demonstrated an approach to enhance the electromagnetic cross section by more than 1,000 times. What makes that possible is topology, an area of study that focuses on properties that are preserved when an object is continuously deformed \u2014 for example, stretched or bent. A newly discovered topological property of light could dramatically change the manipulation of light scattering.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Ming Zhou<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cAs a result of that, we could decouple the relationship between the wavelength and the cross section,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Frequency, wave vector, polarization and phase are fundamental properties often used to describe a photonic system, says Ling Lu, one of the paper\u2019s co-authors and a professor in the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Physics and the Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOver the past few years, topology has emerged as another indispensable degree of freedom \u2014 thus opening a path toward the discovery of fundamentally new states of light and possible revolutionary applications,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Topological photonics could have applications in fields that require concentrated light in a small area, such as medical imaging, in photodetectors, radio-frequency military communications, and others.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt also could be extended to electronic and acoustic systems, because they are all waves,\u201d says Ming Zhou, a graduate student working with Yu and the paper\u2019s lead author. \u201cThis topology may change some of the very fundamental things we have understood for many years.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Other authors on the Nature Communications paper include Lei Ying of UW\u2013Madison and Lei Shi and Jian Zi of the Department of Physics at Fudan University, Shanghai.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One bar, two bars \u2014 it\u2019s an all-too-common problem. You\u2019re in a large building, driving in a remote area, or even right in the middle of a big city, but you can\u2019t stream video, check email or even make a phone call \u2014 because your cellular signal is weak. But the future may be different. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":13604,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/tower-387026_1920-e1510252705889-500x375.jpg",500,375,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/tower-387026_1920-e1510252705889-500x375-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/tower-387026_1920-e1510252705889-500x375-300x225.jpg",300,225,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/tower-387026_1920-e1510252705889-500x375.jpg",500,375,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/tower-387026_1920-e1510252705889-500x375.jpg",500,375,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/tower-387026_1920-e1510252705889-500x375.jpg",500,375,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/tower-387026_1920-e1510252705889-500x375.jpg",500,375,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/tower-387026_1920-e1510252705889-500x375.jpg",500,375,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/tower-387026_1920-e1510252705889-500x375.jpg",500,375,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/tower-387026_1920-e1510252705889-500x375.jpg",500,375,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/tower-387026_1920-e1510252705889-500x375.jpg",500,375,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/tower-387026_1920-e1510252705889-500x375.jpg",500,375,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/tower-387026_1920-e1510252705889-500x375.jpg",480,360,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/tower-387026_1920-e1510252705889-500x375.jpg",87,65,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/tower-387026_1920-e1510252705889-500x375.jpg",500,375,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/tower-387026_1920-e1510252705889-500x375.jpg",96,72,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/tower-387026_1920-e1510252705889-500x375.jpg",150,113,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}