miniaturized optical circuitry tagged posts

Plexcitons travel for 20,000 nanometers, a length which is on the order of the width of human hair. Graphic by Joel Yuen-Zhou

Scientists at UC SD, MIT and HarvardU have engineered “topological plexcitons,” energy-carrying particles that could help make possible the design of new kinds of solar cells and miniaturized optical circuitry. Within the Lilliputian world of solid state physics, light and matter interact in strange ways, exchanging energy back and forth between them.

“When light and matter interact, they exchange energy,” explained Assistant/Prof. Joel Yuen-Zhou. “Energy can flow back and forth between light in a metal (so called plasmon) and light in a molecule (so called exciton)...