Tag Archive for 'Polarized light'

Planck’s law ignores but does not prohibit black-body radiation (BBR) from being circularly polarized. BBR from nanostructured filaments with twisted geometry from nanocarbon or metal has strong ellipticity from 500 to 3000 nanometers. The submicrometer-scale chirality of these filaments satisfies the dimensionality requirements imposed by fluctuation-dissipation theorem and requires symmetry breaking in absorptivity and emissivity according to Kirchhoff’s law. The resulting BBR shows emission anisotropy and brightness exceeding those of conventional chiral photon emitters by factors of 10 to 100. Image credit: Lu et al., doi: 10.1126/science.adq4068.

Nanostructured Filaments Produce Bright Light Waves that Twirl as They Travel

Dec 24, 2024 by News Staff

Bright, twisted light can be produced thanks to nanostructured filaments with twisted geometry, according to scientists at the University of Michigan. Planck’s...

Structure of SOT spin-LED: controlling the intensity of emitted light and charge current is the basis of transferring and processing information; by contrast, robust information storage and magnetic random-access memories are implemented using the spin of the carrier and the associated magnetization in ferromagnets; the missing link between the respective disciplines of photonics, electronics and spintronics is to modulate the circular polarization of the emitted light, rather than its intensity, by electrically controlled magnetization; Dainone et al. demonstrated that this missing link is established at room temperature and zero applied magnetic field in light-emitting diodes through the transfer of angular momentum between photons, electrons and ferromagnets. Image credit: Dainone et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07125-5.

Physicists Transfer Electron Spin to Photons

Mar 28, 2024 by News Staff

A team of physicists led by Dr. Yuan Lu from the Université de Lorraine’s Institut Jean Lamour has used electrical pulses to manipulate magnetic information...

This image from the Event Horizon Telescope shows the polarized view of Sagittarius A*; the lines overlaid on this image mark the orientation of polarization, which is related to the magnetic field around the shadow of the black hole. Image credit: EHT Collaboration.

Event Horizon Telescope Observes Twisted Magnetic Field around Milky Way’s Central Black Hole

Mar 27, 2024 by News Staff

According to astronomers’ best models of black hole evolution, the magnetic fields in the accretion disk need to be strong enough to push the accreting...

Rings of dust surrounding HL Tauri, with line patterns showing the orientation of polarized light. Image credit: NSF / AUI / NRAO / B. Saxton / Stephens et al.

ALMA Detects Dust Grains in Gaps of HL Tauri’s Protoplanetary Disk

Nov 21, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have captured a high-resolution image of HL Tauri, a young star in the constellation...

This image shows the orientation of the magnetic field in the distant galaxy 9io9, seen here when the Universe was only 20% of its current age -- the furthest ever detection of a galaxy’s magnetic field. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / Geach et al.

ALMA Detects Galaxy’s Magnetic Field in Early Universe

Sep 6, 2023 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have detected linearly polarized thermal emission from dust grains in 9io9, a...

VLA image of the Messier 87 radio jet, made at multiple radio frequencies. The jet seen in this image is about 8,000 light-years long. This image clearly shows the corkscrew-like helical structure in the inner part of the jet, which originates at the bright spot at the left, at the core of the galaxy, where a supermassive black hole resides. Image credit: Sophia Dagnello / NRAO / AUI / NSF / Pasetto et al., doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ac3a88.

Astronomers Spot Double-Helix Structure in Messier 87

Dec 8, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers using NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array have captured unprecedented high-fidelity radio images of a jet of material propelled from the...

This EHT image shows the polarized view of the black hole in Messier 87. The lines mark the orientation of polarization, which is related to the magnetic field around the shadow of the black hole. Image credit: EHT Collaboration.

EHT Captures Polarized-Light Image of Messier 87’s Supermassive Black Hole

Mar 24, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) — a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes (ALMA, APEX, the IRAM 30-m telescope,...

As the CMB light (left image) travels through the Universe until observed on Earth (right image), the direction in which the electromagnetic wave oscillates (orange line) is rotated by the angle β; the rotation could be caused by dark matter or dark energy interacting with the CMB light, which changes the patterns of polarization (black lines inside the images); the red and blue regions in the images show hot and cold regions of the CMB, respectively. Image credit: Y. Minami / KEK.

Astrophysicists Find Hints of Beyond-Standard-Model Physics in Universe’s Oldest Light

Nov 30, 2020 by News Staff

Using the polarization data from ESA’s Planck satellite, a mission that have studied the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the oldest light in the Universe,...

A metasurface uses circularly polarized light to generate and control new and complex states of light, such swirling vortices of light. Image credit: Second Bay Studio / Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Newly Developed Metasurface Generates Structured Light Beams

Nov 9, 2017 by News Staff

A team of researchers has developed a new tool that can produce complex states of light. The research appears in the journal Science. A metasurface uses...

Regulus. Image credit: DSS / Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg / SIMBAD.

Astronomers Detect Polarized Light from Regulus

Sep 18, 2017 by News Staff

Nearly five decades after it was first predicted that rapidly rotating hot stars would emit polarized light, astronomers have succeeded in observing the...