#Fiber-Optic

[jcmarchi]

John Joannopoulos receives 2024-2025 Killian Award

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/john-joannopoulos-receives-2024-2025-killian-award/

John Joannopoulos receives 2024-2025 Killian Award

John Joannopoulos, an innovator and mentor in the fields of theoretical condensed matter physics and nanophotonics, has been named the recipient of the 2024-2025 James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award.

Joannopoulos is the Francis Wright Davis Professor of Physics and director of MIT’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies. He has been a member of the MIT faculty for 50 years.

“Professor Joannopoulos’s profound and lasting impact on the field of theoretical condensed matter physics finds its roots in his pioneering work in harnessing ab initio physics to elucidate the behavior of materials at the atomic level,” states the award citation, which was announced at today’s faculty meeting by Roger White, chair of the Killian Award Selection Committee and professor of philosophy at MIT. “His seminal research in the development of photonic crystals has revolutionized understanding of light-matter interactions, laying the groundwork for transformative advancements in diverse fields ranging from telecommunications to biomedical engineering.”

The award also honors Joannopoulos’ service as a “legendary mentor to generations of students, inspiring them to achieve excellence in science while at the same time facilitating the practical benefit to society through entrepreneurship.”

The Killian Award was established in 1971 to recognize outstanding professional contributions by MIT faculty members. It is the highest honor that the faculty can give to one of its members.

“I have to tell you, it was a complete and utter surprise,” Joannopoulos told MIT News shortly after he received word of the award. “I didn’t expect it at all, and was extremely flattered, honored, and moved by it, frankly.”

Joannopoulous has spent his entire professional career at MIT. He came to the Institute in 1974, directly after receiving his PhD in physics at the University of California at Berkeley, where he also earned his bachelor’s degree. Starting out as an assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Physics, he quickly set up a research program focused on theoretical condensed matter physics.

Over the first half of his MIT career, Joannopoulos worked to elucidate the fundamental nature of the electronic, vibrational, and optical structure of crystalline and amorphous bulk solids, their surfaces, interfaces, and defects. He and his students developed numerous theoretical methods to enable tractable and accurate calculations of these complex systems.

In the 1990s, his work with microscopic material systems expanded to a new class of materials, called photonic crystals — materials that could be engineered at the micro- and nanoscale to manipulate light in ways that impart surprising and exotic optical qualities to the material as a whole.

“I saw that you could create photonic crystals with defects that can affect the properties of photons, in much the same way that defects in a semiconductor affect the properties of electrons,” Joannopoulos says. “So I started working in this area to try and explore what anomalous light phenomena can we discover using this approach?”

Among his various breakthroughs in the field was the realization of a “perfect dielectic mirror” — a multilayered optical device that reflects light from all angles as normal metallic mirrors do, and that can also be tuned to reflect and trap light at specific frequencies. He and his colleagues saw potential for the mirror to be made into a hollow fiber that could serve as a highly effective optical conduit, for use in a wide range of applications. To further advance the technology, he and his colleagues launched a startup, which has since developed the technology into a flexible, fiber-optic “surgical scalpel.”

Throughout his career, Joannopoulos has helped to launch numerous startups and photonics-based technologies.

“His ability to bridge the gap between academia and industry has not only advanced scientific knowledge but also led to the creation of dozens of new companies, thousands of jobs, and groundbreaking products that continue to benefit society to this day,” the award citation states.

In 2006, Joannopoulos accepted the position as director of MIT’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN), a collaboration between MIT researchers, industry partners, and military defense experts, who seek innovations to protect and enhance soldiers’ survivability in the field. In his role as ISN head, Joannopoulos has worked across MIT, making connections and supporting new projects with researchers specializing in fields far from his own.

“I get a chance to explore and learn fascinating new things,” says Joannopoulos, who is currently overseeing projects related to hyperspectral imaging, smart and responsive fabrics, and nanodrug delivery. “I love that aspect of really getting to understand what people in other fields are doing. And they’re doing great work across many, many different fields.”

Throughout his career at MIT, Joannopoulos has been especially inspired and motivated by his students, many of whom have gone on to found companies, lead top academic and research institutions, and make significant contributions to their respective fields, including one student who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1998.

“One’s proudest moments are the successes of one’s students, and in that regard, I’ve been extremely lucky to have had truly exceptional students over the years,” Joannopolous says.

His many contributions to academia and industry have earned Joannopoulos numerous honors and awards, including his election to both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a fellow of both the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“The Selection Committee is delighted to have this opportunity to honor Professor John Joannopoulos: a visionary scientist, a beloved mentor, a great believer in the goodness of people, and a leader whose contributions to MIT and the broader scientific community are immeasurable,” the award citation concludes.

[facts-i-just-made-up]

Not A Joke, Not Unreality:

A company called Quantum Fiber (under Century Link) recently set up my home town for fiber optic internet. I got them a month ago and aside from a few outages it was decent.

Last week, it went out. They sent me a super specific time it would be back-

They failed to make it and sent another, minutes later.

And another when that failed.

And over the week, more and more.

I called and they just read me the same email out loud. They offered no escalation or resources. Every time, they fail. I have not had internet for my house in a week, and this morning I got this one-

I looked into other people having the same problem and found this-

Edit forgot link

That's not something called a "766" line, that's them fucking up my city 766 times. This company is fucking shit, and I'm sick of this. I've filed an FCC complaint but those take a month to even get a reply.

So I'm hoping my 173,365 followers can help make this show of their ineptitude and callousness go viral. Please.

They are in a time of massive expansion into many new states and cities. I am asking anyone so inclined with a few minutes to spare to find your town or state's government information technology office or liaison, or just a local government representative of any kind, and write them a quick note stating that this company destroys town utilities and offers absolute frustrating failures of service in return.

If you have Quantum Fiber and have been similarly failed by them, please file an FCC complaint. You might at least get a free month out of it.

If you work with a news source or popular blog, please boost this however you can.

If you are on any app on which they are present, please feel free to write or tag them and let them know they have failed their customers and cities they work with.

Please do not engage in threats or harassment of any form. Keep this legal, civil, and proper so that it can create a legal basis and record of good citizen interaction on the part of this company's victims. I am asking for help in a grassroots campaign, not a violent or prank-filled heap that just gets people in trouble. AND DO NOT FOR ANY REASON EVER PESTER THE WORKERS, PHONE REPS AND TECHNICIANS THEY HAVE OUT THERE. This is the corporation's fault, not the poor folks they employ who they likely try to make take the backlash.

If you have any other ideas on how to hold a mega-corp responsible for the shit they put their customers through, please comment and recommend. I am sick of this shit. I know there are worse things happening and even worse companies doing horrid things right now. But maybe this one is new/small enough that a viral campaign can kick them where it hurts and get them to act more responsibly to their customers and safely to the places they work.

Please help if you have time. Please spread this in the hopes they see it and get off their butts and fix their horrible shit. Any random reblog or post on any platform might be the one their investors hear of.

Thank you anyone for anything you can do.

-Ari

[ilikeit-art]

For a unique friend

[loosethreadstitchery]

I've started playing around with optical illusions lately. This is the first piece I've finished.

Pattern here (my site) or here (Etsy).

[rateaters-sutff]

"Why the fuck is my internet so slow what the hell is happening?"

The devilish shark 8000 meters under water giving fiber optic cabes a light chompapge .

[textillian]

My GoGo Dynamo Shawl by Westknits came off the blocking board this morning, and I immediately wove in and trimmed the ends. I am very happy with how it came out. I can never get a truly accurate photo of this colorway combo of Green Curry and Caramel Apple on Kashmir Fingering by Fiber Optic Yarns; but trust me, it looks even better in person.

My husband and I were meeting friends for dinner tonight, so I took it as show and tell. The one friend bought it on the spot, so that money is going to NAACP LDF, as promised.

[lpn3rd]

[thelemonsnek]

Struggled to find many pokemon blinkies that I liked and I've been having an inordinate amount of fun fixing that :)

[image ids: six blinkies. The first one says "I 💛 wattrel" with a screenshot of wattrel flapping its wings happily on either side of the text. The second says "I fucking love eating fiber optic cables" with a joltik on either side, biting a fiber optic cable. The third says "sneasus christ" and has a Sneasler looking down in shock. The fourth says "fucking purmple" with shiny (purple) wurmples bouncing on either side. The fifth says "nice job!" with a Zoroark collapsed in a heap next to the words. The final blinkie says "the idiot twins" with the Ingo and Emmet plushes to either side of the words. End id]

[jcmarchi]

‘Ruler for Light’ Could Enable Detailed Measurement in Personal Devices - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/ruler-for-light-could-enable-detailed-measurement-in-personal-devices-technology-org/

‘Ruler for Light’ Could Enable Detailed Measurement in Personal Devices - Technology Org

Frequency combs have revolutionized precision measurement, but the bulky, power-hungry devices are limited to lab settings. A new efficient laser “microcomb” developed by Stanford researchers could bring that revolution to the handheld electronics realm.

A microscope image showing a thin-film lithium niobate chip that contains eight of the new “FM-OPO” devices. One device has a footprint around 1×10 mm2 (highlighted here with a dashed rectangle). Image credit: Kevin Multani and Hubert Stokowski / Stanford University

Stanford researchers have unveiled a new type of frequency comb, a high-precision measurement device, that is innovatively small, ultra-energy efficient, and exceptionally accurate. With continued development, this breakthrough “microcomb” – which is detailed in a study published in Nature – could be the basis for mass-market adoption of the devices in everyday electronics.

Frequency combs are specialized lasers that generate evenly spaced-out lines of light akin to the teeth of a comb or, more aptly, the tick marks on a ruler. In the roughly quarter-century of their development, these “rulers for light” have revolutionized many kinds of high-precision measurement, from timekeeping to molecular detection via spectroscopy. Yet because frequency combs require bulky, costly, and power-hungry equipment, their deployment has been largely limited to laboratory settings.

The researchers discovered a workaround for these issues by integrating two different approaches for miniaturizing frequency combs into one straightforward, easily producible, microchip-style platform. Among the many applications the researchers envision for their versatile technology are powerful handheld medical diagnostic devices and widespread greenhouse gas monitoring sensors.

“The structure for our frequency comb brings the best elements of emerging microcomb technology together into one device,” said Hubert Stokowski, a postdoctoral scholar in the lab of Amir Safavi-Naeini, and lead author of the study. “We can potentially scale our new frequency microcomb for compact, low-power, and inexpensive devices that can be deployed almost anywhere.”

“We’re very excited about this new microcomb technology that we’ve demonstrated for novel types of precision sensors that are both small and efficient enough to be in someone’s phone someday,” said Safavi-Naeini, associate professor in the Department of Applied Physics at Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences and senior author of the study.

Wrangling light

This new device is called an Integrated Frequency-Modulated Optical Parametric Oscillator, or FM-OPO.

The tool’s complex name indicates that it combines two strategies for creating the range of distinct frequencies, or colors of light, that constitute a frequency comb. One strategy, called optical parametric oscillation, involves bouncing beams of laser light within a crystal medium, wherein the generated light organizes itself into pulses of coherent, stable waves. The second strategy centers on sending laser light into a cavity and then modulating the phase of the light – achieved by applying radio-frequency signals to the device – to ultimately produce frequency repetitions that similarly act as light pulses.

These two strategies for microcombs have not been used widely because both come with drawbacks. These issues include energy inefficiency, limited ability to adjust optical parameters, and suboptimal comb “optical bandwidth” where the comb-like lines fade as the distance from the center of the comb increases.

The researchers approached the challenge anew through their work on highly promising optical circuit platform based on a material called thin film lithium niobate. The material has advantageous properties compared to silicon, the industry standard material. Two of these helpful properties are “nonlinearity” (it allows light beams of different colors to interact with each other to generate new colors or wavelengths) and a broad range of light wavelengths can pass through it.

The researchers fashioned the components at the heart of the new frequency comb using integrated lithium niobate photonics. These light-manipulating technologies build upon advances in the related, more established field of silicon photonics, which involves fabricating optical and electronic integrated circuits on silicon microchips. In this way, lithium niobate and silicon photonics have both expanded upon the semiconductors in conventional computer chips, the roots of which reach back to the 1950s.

“Lithium niobate has certain properties that silicon doesn’t, and we couldn’t have made our microcomb device without it,” said Safavi-Naeini.

Surprisingly excellent performance

Next, the researchers brought together elements of both optical parametric amplification and phase modulation strategies. The team expected certain performance characteristics from the new frequency comb system on lithium niobate chips – but what they saw proved far better than they anticipated.

Overall, the comb produced a continuous output rather than light pulses, which enabled the researchers to reduce the required input power by approximately an order of magnitude. The device also yielded a conveniently “flat” comb, meaning the comb lines farther in wavelength from the center of the spectrum did not fade in intensity, thus offering greater accuracy and broader utility in measurement applications.

“We were really surprised by this comb,” said Safavi-Naeini. “Although we had some intuition that we would get comb-like behaviors, we weren’t really trying to make exactly this type of comb, and it took us a few months to develop the simulations and theory that explained its main properties.”

For further insight into their overperforming device, the researchers turned to Martin Fejer, the J. G. Jackson and C. J. Wood Professor of Physics and a professor of applied physics at Stanford. Along with other peers at Stanford, Fejer has helped advance modern thin film lithium niobate photonics technologies and the understanding of the material’s crystal properties.

Fejer, who is also a study co-author, made the key connection between the physical principles underlying the microcomb and ideas discussed in scientific literature from the 1970s, particularly concepts pioneered by Stephen Harris, emeritus professor of applied physics and electrical engineering at Stanford.

The new microcombs, with further honing, should be readily manufacturable at conventional microchip foundries with many practical applications such as sensing, spectroscopy, medical diagnostics, fiber-optic communications, and wearable health-monitoring devices.

“Our microcomb chip could be put into anything, with the size of the overall device depending on the size of the battery,” said Stokowski. “The technology we’ve demonstrated could go inside a low-powered personal device, the size of a phone or even smaller, and serve all kinds of useful purposes.”

To read all stories about Stanford science, subscribe to the biweekly Stanford Science Digest.

Source: Stanford University

You can offer your link to a page which is relevant to the topic of this post.

[lionfloss]

Sensorio art center, Paso Robles, CA

[skidmarkeater]

Info Exchange

I drew this when I saw a funny reblog

[loosethreadstitchery]

This came off the frame last night. Cross stitch and blackwork embroidery on 14-count Aida cloth.

Pattern here (my site) or here (Etsy).

[rip-headphones-users]

Ugh- its these idiots AGAIN??????

[beaft]

new hobby: every time i go to an antiques store i search for vintage lamps. this place had so many!! mostly tiffany lamps, but i also found a bunch of murano glass flower lamps and some beautiful hand-embroidered shades as well ❤️❤️❤️

[textillian]

And the Wavelength Wrap is out!

Inspired by the rainbows of light against a wall when sunlight passes through a multi-faceted glass, Wavelength is a wrap worked in slip stitch, using increases and decreases to add movement to the stitches. @fiberopticyarns Over the Rainbow Infinity Fade plus one skein of Kashmir in the colorways Justice and Kindness are used for the wrap you see here.

Purchase through Ravelry or Payhip includes pdf for pattern in the original striping shown, as well as an additional pdf of alternative striping sequences.

From June 1 until June 10, receive a 20% discount by using coupon code PRISMATIC.

Happy Pride!

[cdpdoodler]

had a dream Club Penguin came back, but it was invite only and they implemented polls (presumably to make community feedback more fun?) but the answers would mostly come from the most popular write in answers. answers submitted by the official team would have a little ✅. so people would write random shit or confessions on the survey and since there was no or very little screening you'd get polls that looked like: