Sound, Light Waves in Single-Layer Materials: Nano-Optics Breakthrough Revealed

For the first time, researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of technology have recorded the dissemination of combined sound and light waves in single-layered materials.

The experiments, according to a Newswise report, were executed in the Robert and Ruth Magid Electron Beam Quantum Dynamics Laboratory, headed by Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical & Computer Engineering and the Solid State Institute's Professor Ido Kaminer.

Alternatively known as 2D materials, single-layer materials, are in themselves novel materials, solids that consist of a single layer of atoms.

The first-ever 2-D material discovered known as Graphene was isolated in 2004, for the first time, an achievement that gained the 2010 Nobel Prize.

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Pulses of Light Exhibited

Now, as mentioned, for the first time, Technion scientists exhibit how pulses of light are moving inside such materials. Their findings from the study, Spatiotemporal Imaging of 2D Polariton Wavepacket Dynamics Using Free Electrons, were published in Science following huge interest by a lot of researchers.

Light moves through space at 300,000 kilometers-per-second through water or through glass, it's slowing down by a fraction.

However, when moving through specific few-layers solids, light is slowing down nearly a thousand-fold. This takes place as the light is making the atoms of these special materials are vibrating to produce sound waves also known as phonons, and such atomic sound waves produce light each time they vibrate.

Nevertheless, the pulse is actually a closely bound combination of sound and light, also known as "phonon-polariton." Lit up, the material then sings.

The researchers, a Nanowerk report specified, shone pulses of light along the edge of a 2D material, generating in the material the hybrid sound-light waves.

Not only were the scientists able to record such waves. They discovered the pulses can spontaneously fast-track as well, and then, slow down. Astonishingly, these waves even split into two separate pulses that move at different speeds.

Research Conceptualized During the Pandemic

This research was conceptualized at the height of this pandemic. During the months of lockdown, with the schools, colleges, and universities closed, graduate student, Yaniv Kurman from Kaminer's Lab, sat at home and conducted a mathematical computation, predicting how light pulses should behave in the single-layered materials, not to mention, the manner they could be gauged.

Another student in the same lab, Raphael Dahan, realized how to focus infrared pulses into the electron microscope of the group, and made the essential upgrades to have that accomplished.

Once the lockdown was over, the team was able to prove the theory of Kurman and even disclose additional phenomena they never expected.

While this undertaking is ultimate science research, the researchers are expecting to have multiple studies and applications in the industry.

Kaminer said they can use the system to investigate various physical phenomena that are not otherwise, available.

Breakthrough in Ultrafast Nano-Optics

According to the University of Stuttgart's Professor Harald Giessen, who was not part of this study, he was thrilled by such findings.

The research, he added, is a real breakthrough in ultrafast nano-optics, not to mention, represents groundbreaking, and the leading advantage of the scientific frontier.

The professor also explained, the observation in real space, as well as in real-time is attractive, and has, to his knowledge, not been presented in the past.

John Joannopoulos, a prominent scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not part of the research added, the key to this achievement is in an experimental system's clever design and development.

The finding is shown on Technion's YouTube video below: