optical

The discovery, reported in Physical Review Letters, introduces a fresh strategy for tuning optical behavior and could help advance the development of photonic computers.

The enhanced clarity is why VistaVision hung on longer with the makers of old-school optical effects, serving as a workhorse for the original “Star Wars” trilogy and other pictures into the 21st century.

Its nonlinear optical response was 20 times greater than that of lithium niobate, the leading nonlinear optical material, and nearly triple that of barium titanate, the previous cryogenic benchmark.

Rather than relying on one long crystal or stacking many short ones, they run the light repeatedly through a single short crystal inside an optical parametric amplifier.

Materials called topological insulators, which conduct electricity on their surfaces while remaining insulating inside, are already being studied for new kinds of electronic, optical, and quantum devices.