Following on Glenn comments, i would introduce some initial ideas from
light fron the nanoscale.
As Glenn said, one of the very interesting issues from light studies is
just transforming light into usable energy. So, starting from our sun and
our video discussion, light travels to the earth and nature and life
translated to energy. We are developing new devices to make this
translation more efficient, which could be opens new sutantaible solutions
to energy, which is always complicated (starting from technological, to
political even to cultural aspects).
Nanotechnology, control and manipulation of matter at nanoscale lenghts,
could be one clever direction to try to develope these possible
technologies. Why?, one asnwer is "because seems that nature/life do in
this way". There are lots of bioinspired technologies that comes from this
new opportunity to control mather on the nanoscale. You would remember blue
wings from blue morpho, or the sticky foots from Geckos, or the self
cleaning action from Lotus flower, ... These are all examples where
nanostrutured material was self assembled naturally to produce different
functionalities.
So, how about light. There is too much to say about nano and light. Fisrt
of all, which kinds of light we can deal on naoworld. We can have single
photons (quantized entities from the electromagnetic field), fal field
waves, or, near field waves. But, these kind of light interact with matter,
and we have many different nanoscale assemblies for matter. For exmaple:
Plasmons. I have a very romantic teacher who define plasmons as "sea waves
from the Fermy sea". Even i try to understand deeply what is a plasmon,
this metaphore makes the best picture in my brain. The important thing is
that plasmon from metalic nanostructures are collective electron
oscilations, which can be originated by light irradiation. Or could be used
to enhance light emission. This plasmon light coupling is suggested to be
used on medicine applications, as tumor therapy. Thes estrategies are under
development, but nowadays there are examples of lab on a chip technologies
that can lead to a great improvement on the times and costs of tumor
detection. You can take a look of this TED talk from Ramon Quidant
researcher, from ICFO Institute (Instituto de Ciencias Fotonicas de
Catalunya), which is a well reputated international light research center (
http://www.icfo.eu/):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKnnPet16E0
Polaritons.
Light, as wave, can be controlled by resonantors. Resonator is a kind of
mirrors that reflect light to be "always" inside this resonator. In this
sense, it is possible to create standing waves (by interference effects).
It is possible to put inside this resonator some emitter, in form of
radiating dipole, tuned to this standing wave from resonator. This means
that the emither light from the dipole is just the same that resonates
inside the resonator. To do this it is needed an specific energy for the
emitter, which comes from some quantum world emitter (atom, quantum well,
quantum dots, ...). Following this procedure, light and emitter could be
coupled, so energy transfers oscillating from emither to ligh. This coupled
entity is called polariton, and is used in many quantum information
applications. This video from Shelfild university helps to understand this
Polariton concept.
https://ldsd.group.shef.ac.uk/quantum-animations/
For the art/sci collaborations, i was very surprised that Paul Alivisatos,
editor of Nano Letters jorunal (one of the most prestigious jornal in
naotechnology research) and director of the Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory, helds an art science collaboration about plasmonic light
effects from metalic nanoparticles. You can take a look at:
http://www.cchem.berkeley.edu/pagrp/research.html#art
In his lab was working the artist Kate Nichols. She synthesizes plasmonic
nanoparticles and uses them to create macroscale art whose structural
colors arise from surface plasmon resonance. You can take a look of her
work on this TED talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf9CQfJqNNQ
We will continue on this light from nanoworld !!,
Guillermo.
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