{"id":211246,"date":"2025-04-12T05:24:50","date_gmt":"2025-04-12T10:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/light-that-spirals-like-a-nautilus-shell"},"modified":"2025-04-12T05:24:50","modified_gmt":"2025-04-12T10:24:50","slug":"light-that-spirals-like-a-nautilus-shell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/light-that-spirals-like-a-nautilus-shell","title":{"rendered":"Light that spirals like a nautilus shell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/light-that-spirals-like-a-nautilus-shell2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Beams of light that can be guided into corkscrew-like shapes called optical vortices are used today in a range of applications. Pushing the limits of structured light, Harvard applied physicists in the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) report a new type of optical vortex beam that not only twists as it travels but also changes in different parts at different rates to create unique patterns. The way the light behaves resembles spiral shapes common in nature.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers borrowed from <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/classical+mechanics\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">classical mechanics<\/a> to nickname their never-before-demonstrated light vortex an \u201coptical rotatum,\u201d to describe how the torque on the light\u2019s corkscrew shape gradually changes. In Newtonian physics, \u201crotatum\u201d is the rate of change in torque on an object over time.<\/p>\n<p>The optical rotatum was created in the lab of Federico Capasso, the Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and the Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering at SEAS. \u201cThis is a new behavior of light consisting of an optical vortex that propagates through space and changes in unusual ways,\u201d Capasso said. \u201cIt is potentially useful for manipulating small matter.\u201d The research is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/sciadv.adr9092\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in Science Advances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Beams of light that can be guided into corkscrew-like shapes called optical vortices are used today in a range of applications. Pushing the limits of structured light, Harvard applied physicists in the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) report a new type of optical vortex beam that not only twists as [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engineering","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}