Lifeboat Foundation

Integrated quantum photonics (IQP) is a promising platform for realizing scalable and practical quantum information processing. Up to now, most of the demonstrations with IQP focus on improving the stability, quality, and complexity of experiments for traditional platforms based on bulk and fiber optical elements. A more demanding question is: “Are there experiments possible with IQP that are impossible with traditional technology?”

This question is answered affirmatively by a team led jointly by Xiao-Song Ma and Labao Zhang from Nanjing University, and Xinlun Cai from Sun Yat-sen University, China. As reported in Advanced Photonics, the team realizes quantum communication using a chip based on silicon photonics with a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD). The excellent performance of this chip allows them to realize optimal time-bin Bell state measurement and to significantly enhance the key rate in quantum communication.

The single photon detector is a key element for quantum key distribution (QKD) and highly desirable for photonic chip integration to realize practical and scalable quantum networks. By harnessing the unique high-speed feature of the optical waveguide-integrated SNSPD, the dead time of single-photon detection is reduced by more than an order of magnitude compared to the traditional normal-incidence SNSPD. This in turn allows the team to resolve one of the long-standing challenges in quantum optics: Optimal Bell-state measurement of time-bin encoded qubits.

Researchers from the Technion and the Houston Methodist Research Institute have developed microscopic machines that can deliver drugs to parts of the brain in order to treat injuries and diseases.

VR can soon become perceptually indistinguishable from the physical reality, even superior in many practical ways, and any artificially created “imaginary” world with a logically consistent ruleset of physics would be ultrarealistic. Advanced immersive technologies incorporating quantum computing, AI, cybernetics, optogenetics and nanotech would make this a new “livable” reality within the next few decades. Can this new immersive tech help us decipher the nature of our own “b… See more.

A team of researchers from the University of Florida, led by Dr. Philip Feng, in collaboration with Prof. Steven Shaw in Florida Institute of Technology, has now demonstrated extremely high-efficient mechanical signal amplification in nanoscale mechanical resonators operating at radio frequency. The devices employed in this research might be the tiniest mechanical resonators exhibiting amplification, and the gain achieved is the highest known for all mechanical devices reported to date.

The displacement amplification is realized based on “parametric pumping or parametric amplification” of mechanical motion. Parametric amplification can be mainly achieved when a parameter of system is modulated by twice multiples of the frequency. A simple example of parametric amplification is a child playing a swing. The child can periodically stand and squat twice in a single period of the swing to increase or “amplify” the swing amplitude without anyone helping to push.

The researchers have realized the parametric amplification in the tiny nanoscale devices. The nanoscale drumhead mechanical parametric amplifiers demonstrated in this research consist of an atomically thin two-dimensional semiconducting molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) membrane where the thickness of the drumheads is 0.7, 2.8, 7.7 nanometer with 1.8 micrometer in diameter and 0.0018–0.020 m³ in volume. The nanodrums are fabricated by transferring nanosheet exfoliated from bulk crystal over microcavities to make suspended atomically thin nanodrums.

Advances make high-density, 5D optical storage practical for long-term data archiving.

Researchers have developed a fast and energy-efficient laser-writing method for producing high-density nanostructures in silica glass. These tiny structures can be used for long-term five-dimensional (5D) optical data storage that is more than 10,000 times denser than Blue-Ray optical disc storage technology.

“Individuals and organizations are generating ever-larger datasets, creating the desperate need for more efficient forms of data storage with a high capacity, low energy consumption and long lifetime,” said doctoral researcher Yuhao Lei from the University of Southampton in the UK. “While cloud-based systems are designed more for temporary data, we believe that 5D data storage in glass could be useful for longer-term data storage for national archives, museums, libraries or private organizations.”

Universal covid vaccine works well in chimps human trails next. #COVID19 #cure

Immunization of macaques with nanoparticle-conjugated receptor-binding domain of SARS-CoV-2 adjuvanted with 3M-052 and alum results in cross-neutralizing antibodies against bat coronaviruses, SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 variants, and may provide a platform for developing pan-coronavirus vaccines.

It is challenging to store the exponentially increasing amount of data in the information age. The multiplexed optical data storage with merits of high data density (hundreds of terabytes/disk), low energy consumption, and long lifetime could open a new era in data storage technology. The recent progress in five-dimensional (5D) optical data storage based on anisotropic nanostructures written by femtosecond (fs) laser pulses in transparent materials reveals its potential for real-world applications, but high writing speed and density remain a major challenge. Here, we propose a method for rapid and energy-efficient writing of highly localized anisotropic nanostructures in silica glass by energy modulated megahertz-rate fs pulses. An isotropic nanovoid is initially generated with pulse energy above the microexplosion threshold and then elongated to an anisotropic nanolamella-like structure via the near-field enhancement effect by lower energy pulses, minimizing the unwanted thermal effects from megahertz-rate fs pulses. The anisotropic nanostructures are exploited for 5D data storage with a rate of 106voxels/s, corresponding to a demonstrated fast information recording of ∼225kB/s and a potentially high-density data storage of ∼500TB/disk.

3D solar towers circa 2016.

Improving Efficiency

Most solar panels are placed flat on rooftops because they are designed to harness solar energy when the sun is directly overhead. However, when the angle of the sun’s rays hitting the panel changes, traditional panels quickly become less efficient.

Continue reading “MIT Is Building 3D Solar Towers, and So Far They Have Achieved Phenomenal Results” »

Topology in optics and photonics has been a hot topic since 1,890 where singularities in electromagnetic fields have been considered. The recent award of the Nobel prize for topology developments in condensed matter physics has led to renewed surge in topology in optics with most recent developments in implementing condensed matter particle-like topological structures in photonics. Recently, topological photonics, especially the topological electromagnetic pulses, hold promise for nontrivial wave-matter interactions and provide additional degrees of freedom for information and energy transfer. However, to date the topology of ultrafast transient electromagnetic pulses had been largely unexplored.

In their paper published in the journal Nature Communications, physicists in the UK and Singapore report a new family of electromagnetic pulses, the exact solutions of Maxwell’s equation with toroidal topology, in which topological complexity can be continuously controlled, namely supertoroidal topology. The electromagnetic fields in such supertoroidal pulses have skyrmionic structures as they propagate in free space with the speed of light.

Skyrmions, sophisticated topological particles originally proposed as a unified model of the nucleon by Tony Skyrme in 1,962 behave like nanoscale magnetic vortices with spectacular textures. They have been widely studied in many condensed matter systems, including chiral magnets and liquid crystals, as nontrivial excitations showing great importance for information storing and transferring. If skyrmions can fly, open up infinite possibilities for the next generation of informatics revolution.