optical sensors tagged posts

Nearly a century after Italian physicist Ettore Majorana laid the groundwork for the discovery that electrons could be divided into halves, researchers predict that split photons may also exist, according to a study from Dartmouth and SUNY Polytechnic Institute researchers.

The finding that the building blocks of light can exist in a previously-unimaginable split form advances the fundamental understanding of light and how it behaves.

The theoretical discovery of the split photon — known as a “Majorana boson” — was published in Physical Review Letters.

“This is a major paradigm change of how we understand light in a way that was not believed to be possib...

Using photons to create more powerful and power-efficient processing units for artificial intelligence. Machine learning performed by neural networks is a popular approach to developing artificial intelligence, as researchers aim to replicate brain functionalities for a variety of applications.

A paper in the journal Applied Physics Reviews, by AIP Publishing, proposes a new approach to perform computations required by a neural network, using light instead of electricity...

Image sensor and lens size comparison. Credit: Simon Thiele

A new study presents a miniaturized camera inspired by the natural vision of predators such as eagles that captures images with a high central acuity. The camera demonstrates for the first time direct, 3D printing of a complex imaging system onto a chip to form a multi-aperture camera. The design has potential applications in areas such as endoscopy, optical sensors, and surveillance drones, and it builds upon the growing field of micro-optics that has been revolutionized by advances in 3D printing. The system presented here involves so-called “foveated imaging,” named after the fovea area of the eye, which gives the highest acuity in vision.

It is based on the idea that since many tasks do not require equal clarity across a field...