Volume 3 - October-December 2008
-
Story 1 - 6/10/2008
A Nano-Firefly in the Trap
Fireflies emit pulses of light that allow them to be localized. Quantum dots behave in the same way albeit at the nanoscale. Now they can be manipulated using a relatively low power optical trap.
-
Story 2 - 13/10/2008
An Ultraviolet Laser Diode
Laser diodes are the cheapest and most reliable lasers; nevertheless, they have hardly been able to emit in UV until now. This last barrier has now been broken, thus enabling potential and important applications, ranging from medicine to security issues.
-
Story 3 - 27/10/2008
Make Two, Keep One
To generate single photons remains a challenge, to have them in a pure, well-defined quantum state even more so. Now this is possible, thus paving the way for future quantum technologies and applications.
-
Story 4 - 6/11/2008
Honey, I Shrunk the Microscope!
Many of the everyday objects that we use are small enough to fit in our pockets. Take cell phones, with all their different accessories, for instance: are they also likely to come equipped with microscopes the size of a US quarter one day?
-
Story 5 - 17/11/2008
Neurosurgery goes Nano
inside a Chip
One of the standing goals of neuroscience is to understand neurons at a cellular level, in vivo. A recent development takes this goal one step further by enabling axon cuts and the study of nerve regeneration on individual neurons in live organisms.
-
Story 6 - 24/11/2008
Light's Ring-around-the-rosey
Can light travel only in straight lines? A new kind of light beam that travels along circles may soon provide an interesting twist to this question.
-
Story 7 - 4/12/2008
Visible and Entangled
Until recently, quantum behavior seemed to be the exclusive domain of tiny objects like atoms or electrons. However, entanglement of millimeter-sized membranes may soon come about, thus bringing quantum physics closer to our macroscopic world.
-
Story 8 - 22/12/2008
The Spooky Physics
of Entanglement
In quantum physics, seemingly instantaneous correlations between distant objects can exist. Do these objects communicate? Probably not. However, if they do, their communication must be faster than the speed of light.
