Photo by Tim Wetherell.
ANU scientists have successfully bent light beams around an object on a two dimensional metal surface, opening the door to faster and cheaper computer chips working with light. The international team, including three members from the Research School of Physics and Engineering at ANU, have successfully demonstrated that a tiny beam of light on a flat surface can be bent around an obstacle, and course-correct itself on the other side of that obstacle. It's the world's first two-dimensional demonstration of so-called 'Airy beams'. Their paper on the subject will be published in this month's Physical Review Letters . 'Students in science class learn that light rays travel along straight trajectories and that it can't go around corners,' said ANU team member Professor Yuri Kivshar. 'Recently it was discovered that small beams of light can be bent in a laboratory setting, diffracting much less than a regular beam. These rays of light are called 'Airy Beams,' and named after the English astronomer Sir George Biddell Airy, who studied light in rainbows.
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