Feature
Materials and Photonics: Some Recent Developments
An understanding of nonlinear phenomena and their relationship with materials is spurring creation of novel devices, techniques and schemes to control light-matter interactions. Here’s a look at a few recent advances.
Nine supercontinuum beams generated by a spatial light modulator. [Rocio Borrego Varillas and Jorge Pérez Vizcaíno]
In many optics applications, a common goal is to send the strongest signal from point A to B, avoiding scattering, distortion, diffraction and noise along the way. Today’s fiber communications systems, for example, use advanced techniques to mitigate nonlinear optical effects like phase modulation, four-wave mixing, stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) and stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS). But scientists have long recognized that enhancing nonlinear effects also can produce interesting and useful results—and, in the past decade or so, have made progress in characterizing the physics of materials to better harness those effects.
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