Items tagged with Photonics
Nobody’s going to be pulling enemy star fighters into a mothership Star Trek-style anytime soon, but researchers at the University of St. Andrews (Scotland) and the Institute of Scientific Instruments (ISI, Czech Republic) have developed a tractor beam--or at least an experimental version of the concept. Basically, they figured out how to make an optical field that allows them to reverse the normal forward-moving radiation pressure of light to create a negative force that pulls particles instead of pushing them. This step forward opens the door for relatively inexpensive devices that can sort macromolecules, organelles, and cells through a process that we understand is called optical fractionation....
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Intel's Silicon Photonics Advancement Aims to Accelerate Future Computing, Communications SANTA CLARA, Calif., Dec. 7, 2008 - Intel researchers have made the next advance in the field of Silicon Photonics by achieving world-record performance using a silicon-based Avalanche Photodetector (APD) that could lower costs and improve performance as compared to commercially available optical devices. The research results were published today in Nature Photonics.Silicon Photonics is an emerging technology using standard silicon to send and receive optical information among computers and other electronic devices. The technology aims to address future bandwidth needs of data-intensive computing applications...
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Well, I assume they do. They seem to know more about it than anybody. In a breakthrough paper delivered in the Optics Express journal, IBM has demonstrated their method for greatly improving the transfer of information between multiple computer chip cores, substituting optical signals sent through silicon for electrical pulses sent through copper wire. By greatly shrinking the size of the optical router, or modulator, IBM claims they'll be able to shrink a supercomputer-grade machine down to laptop size. A major challenge for scientists is finding a way to improve communication between [multiple] cores without increasing power consumption.The most promising solution is...
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