Gerichtete Abstrahlung von Licht: üraschende Effekte entdeckt
Surprising direction-dependent effects emerge when light is guided in microscopic structures. This discovery shows promise for both classical and quantum information processing Recently, surprising physical effects were observed using special microscopic waveguides for light. Such "photonic structures" currently are revolutionizing the fields of optics and photonics, and have opened up the new research area of "Chiral Quantum Optics". Physicists from Copenhagen, Innsbruck, and Vienna, who are leading figures in this field, have now written an overview on the topic which just appeared in the scientific journal "Nature". What one learns at school is that light oscillates under a right angle (transversal) with respect to its direction of propagation. Among experts, however, it was already known that light behaves differently when it is confined strongly in the transversal plane using so-called "photonic structures". In particular, this is the case for special ultra-thin glass fibers which have a diameter of only a few hundred nanometers (one nanometer is a millionth part of a millimeter) and which are thereby smaller than the wavelength of light.
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