Particle accelerator on a microchip

Three “accelerators on a chip” made of silicon are mounted on a clear base. Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has awarded 13.5 million US dollars (12.6 million euros) to promote the development of a particle accelerator on a microchip. DESY and the University of Hamburg are among the partners involved in this international project, headed by Robert Byer of Stanford University (USA) and Peter Hommelhoff of the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. Within five years, they hope to produce a working prototype of an “accelerator-on-a-chip”.

For decades, particle accelerators have been an indispensable tool in countless areas of research – from fundamental research in physics to examining the structure of biomolecules in order to develop new drugs. Accelerator-based research has repeatedly been awarded Nobel prizes. Until now, the necessary facilities have been very large and costly. Scientists and engineers are trying out a range of different approaches to build more compact and less expensive particle accelerators. For the time being, the big facilities will remain indispensable for many purposes, however there are some applications in which efficient miniature electron accelerators can provide completely new insights.

“The impact of shrinking accelerators can be compared to the evolution of computers that once occupied entire rooms and can now be worn around your wrist,” says Hommelhoff. This advance could mean that particle accelerators will become available in areas that have previously had no access to such technologies.

The aim of the project is to develop a new type of small, inexpensive particle accelerator for a wide range of different users. Apart from using the fast electrons themselves, they could also be used to produce high-intensity X-rays. “This prototype could set the stage for a new generation of ‘tabletop’ accelerators, with unanticipated discoveries in biology and materials science and potential applications in security scanning, medical therapy and X-ray imaging,” explains Byer.

Some of the accelerator-on-a-chip designs being explored by the international collaboration. Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

The project is based on advances in nano-photonics, the art of creating and using nano structures to generate and manipulate different kinds of light. A laser using visible or infrared light is used to accelerate the electrically charged elementary particles, rather than the radio-frequency (RF) waves currently used. The wavelength of this radiation is some ten to one hundred thousand times shorter than that of the radio waves, meaning that steeper accelerator gradients can be achieved than those using RF technology. “The advantage is that everything is up to fifty times smaller,” explains Franz Kärtner who is a Leading Scientist at DESY, as well as a professor at the University of Hamburg and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US, and a member of Hamburg’s Centre for Ultrafast Imaging (CUI), and who heads a similar project in Hamburg, funded by the European Research Council.

“The typical transverse dimensions of an accelerator cell shrink from ten centimetres to one micrometre,” adds Ingmar Hartl, head of the laser group in DESY’s Photon Science Division. At the moment, the material of choice for the miniature accelerator modules is silicon. “The advantage is that we can draw on the highly advanced production technologies that are already available for silicon microchips,” explains Hartl.

DESY will bring its vast knowhow as an internationally leader in laser technology to the project, which has already paid off in other collaborations involving the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. There, Hommelhoff’s group showed that for slow electrons a micro-structured accelerator module is able to achieve steeper acceleration gradients than RF technology.

Byer’s group had demonstrated independently the same effect for fast, so-called relativistic electrons.

However, it is still a long way from an experimental set-up in a laboratory to a working prototype. Individual components of the system will have to be developed from scratch.

Among other things, DESY is working on a high-precision electron source to feed the elementary particles into the accelerator modules, a powerful laser for accelerating them, and an electron undulator for creating X-rays. In addition, the interaction between the miniature components is not yet a routine matter, especially not when it comes to joining up several accelerator modules.

The SINBAD (“Short Innovative Bunches and Accelerators at DESY”) accelerator lab that is currently being set up at DESY will provide the ideal testing environment for the miniature accelerator modules. “SINBAD will allow us to feed high-quality electron beams into the modules, to test the quality of the radiation and work out an efficient way of coupling the laser.

DESY offers unique opportunities in this respect,” explains Ralph Aßmann, Leading Scientist at DESY.

Apart from DESY, the Universities of Stanford, Erlangen-Nürnberg and Hamburg, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in the US, the Swiss Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), the Purdue University, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and the Technical University of Darmstadt are also involved in the project, as well as the US company Tech-X.

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation fosters path-breaking scientific discovery, environmental conservation, patient care improvements and the preservation of the special character of the San Francisco Bay Area. Gordon Moore is one of the founders of the chip manufacturer Intel and the author of “Moore's Law”, which predicts that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.

DESY

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Nano 'hall of mirrors' causes molecules to mix with light

When a molecule emits a blink of light, it doesn't expect it to ever come back. However researchers have now managed to place single molecules in such a tiny optical cavity that emitted photons, or particles of light, return to the molecule before they have properly left. The energy oscillates back and forth between light and molecule, resulting in a complete mixing of the two.

Previous attempts to mix molecules with light have been complex to produce and only achievable at very low temperatures, but the researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, have developed a method to produce these 'half-light' molecules at room temperature.

These unusual interactions of molecules with light provide new ways to manipulate the physical and chemical properties of matter, and could be used to process quantum information, aid in the understanding of complex processes at work in photosynthesis, or even manipulate the chemical bonds between atoms. The results are reported in the journal Nature.

To use single molecules in this way, the researchers had to reliably construct cavities only a billionth of a metre (one nanometre) across in order to trap light. They used the tiny gap between a gold nanoparticle and a mirror, and placed a coloured dye molecule inside.

"It's like a hall of mirrors for a molecule, only spaced a hundred thousand times thinner than a human hair," said Professor Jeremy Baumberg of the NanoPhotonics Centre at Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, who led the research.

In order to achieve the molecule-light mixing, the dye molecules needed to be correctly positioned in the tiny gap. "Our molecules like to lie down flat on the gold, and it was really hard to persuade them to stand up straight," said Rohit Chikkaraddy, lead author of the study.

To solve this, the team joined with a team of chemists at Cambridge led by Professor Oren Scherman to encapsulate the dyes in hollow barrel-shaped molecular cages called cucurbiturils, which are able to hold the dye molecules in the desired upright position.

When assembled together correctly, the molecule scattering spectrum splits into two separated quantum states which is the signature of this 'mixing'. This spacing in colour corresponds to photons taking less than a trillionth of a second to come back to the molecule.

A key advance was to show strong mixing of light and matter was possible for single molecules even with large absorption of light in the metal and at room temperature. "Finding single-molecule signatures took months of data collection," said Chikkaraddy.

The researchers were also able to observe steps in the colour spacing of the states corresponding to whether one, two, or three molecules were in the gap.

###

The Cambridge team collaborated with theorists Professor Ortwin Hess at the Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London and Dr Edina Rosta at Kings College London to understand the confinement and interaction of light in such tiny gaps, matching experiments amazingly well.

Reference:

Single-molecule strong coupling at room temperature in plasmonic nanocavities
Nature (2016) doi:10.1038/nature17974

University of Cambridge

To infinity and beyond: Light goes infinitely fast with new on-chip material

Electrons are so 20th century. In the 21st century, photonic devices, which use light to transport large amounts of information quickly, will enhance or even replace the electronic devices that are ubiquitous in our lives today. But there’s a step needed before optical connections can be integrated into telecommunications systems and computers: researchers need to make it easier to manipulate light at the nanoscale.  

Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have done just that, designing the first on-chip metamaterial with a refractive index of zero, meaning that the phase of light can travel infinitely fast. 

This new metamaterial was developed in the lab of Eric Mazur, the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics and Area Dean for Applied Physics at SEAS, and is described in the journal Nature Photonics.

“Light doesn’t typically like to be squeezed or manipulated but this metamaterial permits you to manipulate light from one chip to another, to squeeze, bend, twist and reduce diameter of a beam from the macroscale to the nanoscale,” said Mazur. “It’s a remarkable new way to manipulate light.”

Although this infinitely high velocity sounds like it breaks the rule of relativity, it doesn’t. Nothing in the universe travels faster than light carrying information — Einstein is still right about that. But light has another speed, measured by how fast the crests of a wavelength move, known as phase velocity. This speed of light increases or decreases depending on the material it’s moving through.

When light passes through water, for example, its phase velocity is reduced as its wavelengths get squished together. Once it exits the water, its phase velocity increases again as its wavelength elongates. How much the crests of a light wave slow down in a material is expressed as a ratio called the refraction index — the higher the index, the more the material interferes with the propagation of the wave crests of light. Water, for example, has a refraction index of about 1.3.

When the refraction index is reduced to zero, really weird and interesting things start to happen.

In a zero-index material, there is no phase advance, meaning light no longer behaves as a moving wave, traveling through space in a series of crests and troughs. Instead, the zero-index material creates a constant phase — all crests or all troughs — stretching out in infinitely long wavelengths.  The crests and troughs oscillate only as a variable of time, not space.

This uniform phase allows the light to be stretched or squished, twisted or turned, without losing energy. A zero-index material that fits on a chip could have exciting applications, especially in the world of quantum computing.  

“Integrated photonic circuits are hampered by weak and inefficient optical energy confinement in standard silicon waveguides,” said Yang Li, a postdoctoral fellow in the Mazur Group and first author on the paper. “This zero-index metamaterial offers a solution for the confinement of electromagnetic energy in different waveguide configurations because its high internal phase velocity produces full transmission, regardless of how the material is configured.” 

The metamaterial consists of silicon pillar arrays embedded in a polymer matrix and clad in gold film. It can couple to silicon waveguides to interface with standard integrated photonic components and chips.

“In quantum optics, the lack of phase advance would allow quantum emitters in a zero-index cavity or waveguide to emit photons which are always in phase with one another,” said Philip Munoz, a graduate student in the Mazur lab and co-author on the paper.  “It could also improve entanglement between quantum bits, as incoming waves of light are effectively spread out and infinitely long, enabling even distant particles to be entangled.”

“This on-chip metamaterial opens the door to exploring the physics of zero index and its applications in integrated optics,” said Mazur. 

Harvard

Tracking slow nanolight in natural hyperbolic metamaterial slabs

Tracking slow nanolight in natural hyperbolic metamaterial slabs

Researchers at CIC nanoGUNE (Basque Country) in collaboration with colleagues at ICFO - The Institute of Photonic Sciences (Catalunya) have imaged how light moves inside an exotic class of matter known as hyperbolic materials. They observed, for the first time, ultraslow pulse propagation and backward propagating waves in deep subwavelength-scale thick slabs of boron nitride - a natural hyperbolic material for infrared light. This work has been funded by the EC Graphene Flagship and was recently reported in Nature Photonics.

Hyperbolic materials are very special because they behave like a metal in one direction, but like an insulator in the other. Until now, these materials have been used to fabricate complex nanostructures that permit subwavelength-scale imaging, as well as the focusing and controlling of light at the nanoscale. However, in order to fully exploit their potential, it is necessary to study and understand how light behaves inside them.

The work lays the foundations for studying the precise manner in which light travels through complex optical systems at the subwavelength scale in extremely high levels of detail. Such a capability will be vital for verifying that future nanophotonic devices, perhaps with biosensing or optical computing applications, are functioning as expected.

“The difficulty in performing the reported experiments is the extremely short wavelength of light when it is inside a hyperbolic material” explains Ikerbasque Professor Rainer Hillenbrand, leader of the nanooptics group at nanoGUNE. When light moves inside the material - in our case mid-infrared light in a 135 nm boron nitride slab - it travels in the form of what we call a polariton, where the light is actually coupled to the vibrations of the matter itself".

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Rice researchers make ultrasensitive conductivity measurements

Researchers at Rice University have discovered a new way to make ultrasensitive conductivity measurements at optical frequencies on high-speed nanoscale electronic components.

The research at Rice’s Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) is described online in a new study in the American Chemical Society’s journal ACS Nano. In a series of experiments, LANP researchers linked pairs of puck-shaped metal nanodisks with metallic nanowires and showed how the flow of current at optical frequencies through the nanowires produced “charge transfer plasmons” with unique optical signatures.

“The push to continually increase the speed of microchip components has researchers looking at nanoscale devices and components that operate at optical frequencies for next-generation electronics,” said LANP Director Naomi Halas, the lead scientist on the study. “It is not well-known how these materials and components operate at extremely high frequencies of light, and LANP’s new technique provides a way to measure the electrical transport properties of nanomaterials and structures at these extremely high frequencies.”

Read more: http://www.nanotechnologyworld.org/#!Rice-researchers-make-ultrasensitive-conductivity-measurements/c89r/5578553e0cf2df2eae412b28 

World’s smallest spirals could guard against identity theft

Take gold spirals about the size of a dime…and shrink them down about six million times. The result is the world’s smallest continuous spirals: “nano-spirals” with unique optical properties that would be almost impossible to counterfeit if they were added to identity cards, currency and other important objects.

Students and faculty at Vanderbilt University fabricated these tiny Archimedes’ spirals and then used ultrafast lasers at Vanderbilt and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, to characterize their optical properties. The results are reported in a paper published online by the Journal of Nanophotonics on May 21.

“They are certainly smaller than any of the spirals we’ve found reported in the scientific literature,” said Roderick Davidson II, the Vanderbilt doctoral student who figured out how to study their optical behavior. The spirals were designed and made at Vanderbilt by another doctoral student, Jed Ziegler, now at the Naval Research Laboratory.

Most other investigators who have studied the remarkable properties of microscopic spirals have done so by arranging discrete nanoparticles in a spiral pattern: similar to spirals drawn with a series of dots of ink on a piece of paper. By contrast, the new nano-spirals have solid arms and are much smaller: A square array with 100 nano-spirals on a side is less than a hundredth of a millimeter wide.

When these spirals are shrunk to sizes smaller than the wavelength of visible light, they develop unusual optical properties. For example, when they are illuminated with infrared laser light, they emit visible blue light. A number of crystals produce this effect, called frequency doubling or harmonic generation, to various degrees. The strongest frequency doubler previously known is the synthetic crystal beta barium borate, but the nano-spirals produce four times more blue light per unit volume.

When infrared laser light strikes the tiny spirals, it is absorbed by electrons in the gold arms. The arms are so thin that the electrons are forced to move along the spiral. Electrons that are driven toward the center absorb enough energy so that some of them emit blue light at double the frequency of the incoming infrared light.

“This is similar to what happens with a violin string when it is bowed vigorously,” said Stevenson Professor of Physics Richard Haglund, who directed the research. “If you bow a violin string very lightly it produces a single tone. But, if you bow it vigorously, it also begins producing higher harmonics, or overtones. The electrons at the center of the spirals are driven pretty vigorously by the laser’s electric field. The blue light is exactly an octave higher than the infrared – the second harmonic.”

Computer simulation of the harmonic emissions produced by a nano-spiral when it is being illuminated by infrared light. (Haglund Lab / Vanderbilt)

The nano-spirals also have a distinctive response to polarized laser light. Linearly polarized light, like that produced by a Polaroid filter, vibrates in a single plane. When struck by such a light beam, the amount of blue light the nano-spirals emit varies as the angle of the plane of polarization is rotated through 360 degrees.

The effect is even more dramatic when circularly polarized laser light is used. In circularly polarized light, the polarization plane rotates either clockwise or counterclockwise. When left-handed nano-spirals are illuminated with clockwise polarized light, the amount of blue light produced is maximized because the polarization pushes the electrons toward the center of the spiral. Counterclockwise polarized light, on the other hand, produces a minimal amount of blue light because the polarization tends to push the electrons outward so that the waves from all around the nano-spiral interfere destructively.

The combination of the unique characteristics of their frequency doubling and response to polarized light provide the nano-spirals with a unique, customizable signature that would be extremely difficult to counterfeit, the researchers said.

So far, Davidson has experimented with small arrays of gold nano-spirals on a glass substrate made using scanning electron-beam lithography. Silver and platinum nano-spirals could be made in the same way. Because of the tiny quantities of metal actually used, they can be made inexpensively out of precious metals, which resist chemical degradation. They can also be made on plastic, paper and a number of other substrates.

If nano-spirals were embedded in a credit card or identification card, they could be detected by a device comparable to a barcode reader“If nano-spirals were embedded in a credit card or identification card, they could be detected by a device comparable to a barcode reader,” said Haglund.

The frequency doubling effect is strong enough so that arrays that are too small to see with the naked eye can be detected easily. That means they could be placed in a secret location on a card, which would provide an additional barrier to counterfeiters.

The researchers also argue that coded nano-spiral arrays could be encapsulated and placed in explosives, chemicals and drugs – any substance that someone wants to track closely – and then detected using an optical readout device.

Additional contributors to the study include graduate student Guillermo Vargas and Research Assistant Professor Sergey Avanesyan from Vanderbilt and scientific staff members Yu Gongand Wayne Hess at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

The research was supported by Department of Energy Office of Science grant DE-FG02-01ER45917 and National Science Foundation grants HP-1058571 and ARI-R2 DMR-0963361.

Source link: http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2015/06/worlds-smallest-spirals-could-guard-against-identity-theft/

Autonomous Atom Assembly of Nanostructures using a Scanning Tunneling Microscope

Automated assembly of individual cobalt atoms on an atomically
flat copper surface into simple geometric shapes, a square, a triangle,
and a circle. From left to right, each figure shows the configuration
after each atom move. Image size 15 nm × 15 nm. Center: Perfect
assembly of the NIST logo after four steps of automated assembly.
Image size 40 nm × 17 nm. All images are shown in colored 3D top view
with light shadowing with a height range of ≈100 pm.

NIST researchers have demonstrated the autonomous computer-controlled assembly of atoms into perfect nanostructures using a low temperature scanning tunneling microscope. The results, published in an invited article in the Review of Scientific Instruments, show the construction without human intervention of quantum confined two-dimensional nanostructures using single atoms or single molecules on a copper surface.

A major goal of nanotechnology is to develop so-called “bottom up” technologies to arrange matter at will by placing atoms exactly where one wants them in order to build nanostructures with specific properties or function. The researchers, led by Robert Celotta and Joseph Stroscio from the CNST, have demonstrated the first steps towards achieving that capability using the atom manipulation mode of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) in combination with autonomous motion algorithms.

The team, which includes Stephen Balakirsky (previously in EL and now at Georgia Tech), Aaron Fein (PML), Frank Hess (previously in the CNST), and Gregory Rutter (previously in the CNST and now at Intel), used autonomous algorithms to manipulate single atoms and molecules, much like the algorithms for “hands-free” car driving. The system works by first scanning the locations of available atoms on the surface. It then specifies the desired coordinates of atoms of a nanostructure, and autonomously calculates and directs the trajectories for the STM probe tip to move all the atoms to their desired locations.  

The team was able to demonstrate that it could autonomously construct cobalt atoms into nanostructures that confine the quantum properties of the copper’s surface electrons.  It then used the STM to measure those properties. In addition to demonstrating the construction of nanostructures made out of atoms, they demonstrated that it was possible to construct nanoscale lattices made of carbon monoxide molecules and to tailor-make interacting quantum dots formed from vacancies in the carbon monoxide lattices.

The researchers believe that an approach based on autonomous construction of atoms and molecules using this technique could be the foundation for an easily accessed toolkit for producing tailored quantum states with applications in quantum information processing and nanophotonics.

http://www.nist.gov/cnst/automated_atom_assembly.cfm

First phononic crystal that can be altered in real time

Author’s impression of an acoustic micro-cloak made
of an array of spherical particlesImage courtesy of Mihai Caleap,
University of Bristol, copyright © 2014

Using an acoustic metadevice that can influence the acoustic space and can control any of the ways in which waves travel, engineers have demonstrated, for the first time, that it is possible to dynamically alter the geometry of a three-dimensional colloidal crystal in real time.

The colloidal crystals designed in the study, called metamaterials, are artificially structured materials that extend the properties of existing naturally occurring materials and compounds. The research by academics from the University of Bristol’s Department of Mechanical Engineering is published online this week in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

Dr Mihai Caleap, Research Associate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, said: “We have been working on systems that are reconfigurable in real time with a view to creating genuinely active metamaterials.

“Such materials will allow researchers to gain unprecedented control over a range of optical and acoustic wave phenomena. To date, whilst numerous examples of metamaterials now exist, none are reconfigurable in three-dimensions.”

The researchers used acoustic assembly to trap a suspension of microspheres in patterns resembling crystal lattices. The study showed the experimental realisation of a three-dimensional colloidal crystal that is reconfigurable in real time and that has the ability to rapidly alter its acoustic filtering characteristics.

Dynamically reconfigurable metamaterials based devices with optical or acoustic wavelengths from ten microns to ten cm could have a wide range of applications. In optics it could lead to new beam deflectors or filters for terahertz imaging and in acoustics it might be possible to create acoustic barriers that can be optimised depending on the changing nature of the incident sound. Further applications in reconfigurable cloaks and lenses are also now conceivable.

Bruce Drinkwater, Professor of Ultrasonics in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and co-author, said: “Our reconfigurable acoustic assembly method is an important step as it has clear advantages over other possible approaches, for example optical trapping and self-assembly.

“In particular, acoustic assembly is scalable with wavelength from microns to metres. The method will work on a vast range of materials, such as nearly all solid-fluid combinations, it will also enable almost any geometry to be assembled and it is cheap and easy to integrate with other systems.”

Paper: Acoustically trapped colloidal crystals that are reconfigurable in real-time, Mihai Caleap and Bruce Drinkwater, PNAS, online early edition the week of March 31, 2014.

Source: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2014/march/colloidal-crystal.html

Rainbow-catching waveguide could revolutionize energy technologies

The image shows a “multilayered waveguide taper array.”
The different wavelengths, or colors, are absorbed
by the waveguide tapers (thimble-shaped structures)
that together form an array.

By slowing and absorbing certain wavelengths of light, engineers open new possibilities in solar power, thermal energy recycling and stealth technology.

More efficient photovoltaic cells. Improved radar and stealth technology. A new way to recycle waste heat generated by machines into energy.

All may be possible due to breakthrough photonics research at the University at Buffalo.

The work, published March 28 in the journal Scientific Reports, explores the use of a nanoscale microchip component called a “multilayered waveguide taper array” that improves the chip’s ability to trap and absorb light.

Unlike current chips, the waveguide tapers (the thimble-shaped structures pictured above) slow and ultimately absorb each frequency of light at different places vertically to catch a “rainbow” of wavelengths, or broadband light.

The paper, “Broadband absorption engineering of hyperbolic metafilm patterns,” is here: http://bit.ly/1g72Is5.

“We previously predicted the multilayered waveguide tapers would more efficiently absorb light, and now we’ve proved it with these experiments,” says lead researcher Qiaoqiang Gan, PhD, UB assistant professor of electrical engineering. “This advancement could prove invaluable for thin-film solar technology, as well as recycling waste thermal energy that is a byproduct of industry and everyday electronic devices such as smartphones and laptops.”

Each multilayered waveguide taper is made of ultrathin layers of metal, semiconductors and/or insulators. The tapers absorb light in metal dielectric layer pairs, the so-called hyperbolic metamaterial. By adjusting the thickness of the layers and other geometric parameters, the tapers can be tuned to different frequencies including visible, near-infrared, mid-infrared, terahertz and microwaves.

The structure could lead to advancements in an array of fields.

For example, there is a relatively new field of advanced computing research called on-chip optical communication. In this field, there is a phenomenon known as crosstalk, in which an optical signal transmitted on one waveguide channel creates an undesired scattering or coupling effect on another waveguide channel. The multilayered waveguide taper structure array could potentially prevent this.

It could also improve thin-film photovoltaic cells, which are a promising because they are less expensive and more flexible that traditional solar cells. The drawback, however, is that they don’t absorb as much light as traditional cells. Because the multilayered waveguide taper structure array can efficiently absorb the visible spectrum, as well as the infrared spectrum, it could potentially boost the amount of energy that thin-film solar cells generate.

The multilayered waveguide taper array could help recycle waste heat generated by power plants and other industrial processes, as well as electronic devices such as televisions, smartphones and laptop computers.

“It could be useful as an ultra compact thermal-absorption, collection and liberation device in the mid-infrared spectrum,” says Dengxin Ji, a PhD student in Gan’s lab and first author of the paper.

It could even be used as a stealth, or cloaking, material for airplanes, ships and other vehicles to avoid radar, sonar, infrared and other forms of detection. “The multilayered waveguide tapers can be scaled up to tune the absorption band to a lower frequency domain and absorb microwaves efficiently,” says Haomin Song, another PhD student in Gan’s lab and the paper’s second author.

Additional authors of the paper include Haifeng Hu, Kai Liu, Xie Zeng and Nan Zhang, all PhD candidates in UB’s Department of Electrical Engineering.

The National Science Foundation sponsored the research.

Gan is a member of UB’s electrical engineering optics and photonics research group, which includes professors Alexander N. Cartwright (also UB vice president for research and economic development), Edward Furlani and Pao-Lo Liu; associate professor Natalia Litchinitser; and assistant professor Liang Feng.

The group carries out research in nanophotonics, biophotonics, hybrid inorganic/organic materials and devices, nonlinear and fiber optics, metamaterials, nanoplasmonics, optofluidics, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), biomedical microelectromechanical systems (BioMEMs), biosensing and quantum information processing.

Source: http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2014/03/049.html#sthash.9qx1DAsE.dpuf