solitons tagged posts

Kerry Vahala and collaborators from UC Santa Barbara have found a unique solution to an optics problem. When we last checked in with Caltech’s Kerry Vahala three years ago, his lab had recently reported the development of a new optical device called a turnkey frequency microcomb that has applications in digital communications, precision time keeping, spectroscopy, and even astronomy.

This device, fabricated on a silicon wafer, takes input laser light of one frequency and converts it into an evenly spaced set of many distinct frequencies that form a train of pulses whose length can be as short as 100 femtoseconds (quadrillionths of a second). (The comb in the name comes from the frequencies being spaced like the teeth of a hair comb.)

Now Vahala (BS ’80, MS ’81,...

A team of physicists has taken pictures of a theorized but previously undetected magnetic wave, which offers the potential to be an energy-efficient means to transfer data in electronics. “This is an exciting discovery because it shows that small magnetic waves–known as spin-waves–can add up to a large one in a magnet, a wave that can maintain its shape as it moves,” explains NYU Prof Andrew Kent. “A specialized x-ray method that can focus on particular magnetic elements with very high spatial resolution enabled this discovery and should enable many more insights into this behavior.”

To push the limits of energy efficiency in the future we need to understand better how magnetic devices behave on fast timescales at the nanoscale, which is why we are using this dedicated ultrafast x-ra...