right angle (transversal) tagged posts

This is the directional emission of light. Credit: TU Wien

Recently, surprising physical effects were observed using special microscopic waveguides for light. Such “photonic structures” currently are revolutionizing the fields of optics and photonics, and have opened up the new research area of “Chiral Quantum Optics.” What one learns at school is that light oscillates under a right angle (transversal) with respect to its direction of propagation. Among experts, however, it was already known that light behaves differently when it is confined strongly in the transversal plane using “photonic structures.” In particular, this is the case for special ultra-thin glass fibers which have a diameter of only a few hundred nanometers and which are thereby smaller than the wavelength of light...