News Archive

A team of physicists, mathematicians, and electrical engineers has figured out a trick to keep light pulses from diverging or focusing as they travel over a distance. Using a multi-layer sandwich of glass plates alternating with air, the scientists have provided the first experimental demonstration of a procedure called "nonlinearity management." This technique could be useful in future generations of devices involving optical switching and optical information processing, for which precise control of laser pulses will be advantageous. Reporting in the July 21, 2006, issue of Physical Review Letters, the researchers demonstrate that a laser beam passing through multiple layers of glass and air can be made to last much longer than if it had passed through only one type of medium. Mason Porter and Martin Centurion, postdocs from the Center for the Physics of Information, Demetri Psaltis, the Myers Professor of Electrical Engineering, and Panayotis Kevrekidis, Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst are the principals of this investigation. Read more... 8-4-06

Doctoral student Andrea Armani and Kerry Vahala, Ted and Ginger Jenkins Professor of Information Science and Technology and Professor of Applied Physics, report that an optical microresonator can be configured to detect heavy water. The technique is 30 times more sensitive than any other existing method. The device is shaped like a mushroom and was originally designed three years ago to store light for future opto-electronic applications. With a diameter smaller than that of a human hair, the microresonator is made of silica and is coupled with a tunable laser. The detection method could be helpful in the fight against international nuclear proliferation. Read more... 6-12-06

The ASCIT Teaching Awards were recently announced, with EAS professors Ali Hajimi and Niles Pierce among those honored for their exceptional teaching. Kudos!

Marc Bockrath, Assistant Professor of Applied Physics, has been awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship. Sloan Research Fellowships are designed to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise. Each fellow is free to use the award to pursue whatever lines of inquiry are of the most compelling interest to him or her. The Fellowship lasts two years and carries a grant of $45,000.