Published: May 26, 2009
Healing Wounds with Lasers, Vehicles that Drive Themselves, High-Res Satellites and Projectors, Flexible Monitors, Other Cutting-Edge Optics
WASHINGTON - (BUSINESS WIRE) - Researchers from around the world will present the latest breakthroughs
in electro-optics, lasers and the application of light waves at the 2009
Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics/International Quantum
Electronics Conference (CLEO/IQEC) May 31 to June 5 at the Baltimore
Convention Center in Baltimore.
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS OF THE MEETING:
-
Healing with Light
-
Vehicles that Drive Themselves
-
Flexible Monitors for Future Battlefields
-
World's Highest-Resolution Commercial Satellite
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More Quiet Mirrors
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Terahertz Modulators
-
World's Highest-Resolution Projector
-
Picosecond Oscilloscope
HEALING WITH LIGHT
Star Trek scanners that fix injuries with beams of light may not be
science fiction after all. A new optical technology that lines up living
cells and controls their movements has opened the door to better
artificial tissues and wounds that heal faster with less scarring.
For years, scientists have used the energy in laser light to drill
microscopic holes or as tweezers or traps to direct and maneuver small
pieces of matter. Guiding entire cells, though, has proven difficult
because the lasers used for manipulation tend to damage the structural
units of living organisms.
Now Aristide Dogariu and colleagues at the University of Central Florida
in Orlando have developed an optical procedure that does not harm cells,
but affects their skeletons - an ensemble of slender rods made out of an
abundant protein called actin. The actin rods are constantly growing and
shrinking inside of cells. The direction in which they grow changes the
cell's membrane shape and dictates where the cell moves.
Dogariu and colleagues use the polarization of optical waves to create a
field around the cells in which the growing actin rods line up like a
compass in the Earth's magnetic field. These optical fields can be used
to guide large groups of cells to line up and move in the same direction.
The technique could be useful for cancer assays, which test the motility
of cells, or as a non-invasive, non-toxic boost for regenerative
medicine. Though cells have complicated and intriguing mechanisms to
sense and communicate where an injury occurs, the possibility of using
photonic scaffolds to stimulate and guide cells' motility to accelerate
tissue repair, is now quite promising.
Presentation CMMM2; Monday, June 1, 4 - 4:15 p.m.
VEHICLES THAT DRIVE THEMSELVES
The thought of a car or truck that can drive itself is at once both
exciting and frightening. Autonomous vehicle navigation, as the
technology is known, may make life more convenient if it allows people
to kick back and enjoy a good book or movie while their cars guide
themselves through rush-hour traffic. But what happens if it starts to
rain or if traffic suddenly picks up? If the technology is to work at
all, it will have to be completely safe on all roads, under all speeds,
and in all weather. Therein lies the challenge: if cars and trucks are
to drive autonomously, they will need futuristic sensors and advanced
computing capabilities to respond to ever-changing road conditions.
Perhaps the most extreme example of ever-changing conditions is a war
zone, where roads may be reduced to rubble and vehicles are natural
targets of attack. Rolling out fleets of self-navigating vehicles for
the military is an enticing idea because it could keep thousands of
troops out of harm's way. But will it be possible for these vehicles to
operate in war zones? This question was the inspiration for a recent
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contest aimed at
spurring the development of such technologies.
Held at a former air force base in Victorville, Calif. in late 2007, the
DARPA Urban Challenge offered a $3.5 million purse to competitors who
could design the fastest and safest vehicles that could traverse a
60-mile urban course in moving traffic in less than six hours. The
contestant vehicles were unmanned and had to complete a simulated
military supply mission, maneuvering through a mock city environment,
avoiding obstacles, merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic
circles, and negotiating intersections -- all while conforming to
California driving rules. Of the 89 international teams that entered the
challenge, only six finished in the allotted time.
Wende Zhang of General Motors was part of the team that designed the
winning vehicle, which finished with the fastest time -- an average
speed of approximately 13 miles per hour. The GM team drew upon existing
technology already offered in some of their vehicles that can assist in
parking or detect lane markers and trigger alarms if the drivers are
coming too close to the shoulder of the road. For the DARPA challenge,
they developed a more sophisticated package of sensors that included GPS
coupled with a camera and a laser-ranging LIDAR system to guide and
correct the vehicle's route through the city. In Baltimore, Zhang will
present GM's patented new methods for detecting lanes and correcting a
vehicle's route, which helped them win the challenge.
Though they won, don't look for robotic chauffeurs immediately. The
technology must prove reliable in many different road, weather and
lighting conditions. Still, says Zhang, a commercially-viable autonomous
driving product may be available in the next decade.
Presentation PThB1; Thursday, June 4, 2:15 - 2:45 p.m.
FLEXIBLE MONITORS FOR FUTURE BATTLEFIELDS
Among the technological demands of an increasingly sophisticated U.S.
military force is the need for futuristic computer displays. While
existing flat-panel, light-emitting diodes (LED) displays are good for
most commercial purposes, they may not be optimized for the modern
battlefield; they could be too heavy and too fragile, for instance.
Making them more durable with protective aluminum and plexiglass casing
would only add bulk and weight. Their energy consumption is also an
issue in the field, where U.S. soldiers have to maximize precious
battery power.
Flexible displays are an attractive alternative to existing liquid
crystal display (LCD) models because they would be lighter and more
durable, consume less power, and could ultimately be rolled up and
stuffed in a pocket between uses. The technology needed to make such
displays already exists. It is based on arraying pixels of individual
red, green, and blue LEDs on top of electronic circuitry fabricated on
flexible plastic substrates. A number of laboratories in the U.S. have
already made experimental versions of such flexible displays.
The key challenge, says Eric Forsythe of Army Research Laboratory, is to
improve the size, weight, and energy efficiency of these experimental
displays and to find a design that can be easily manufactured. In
Baltimore, Forsythe will discuss the latest research on organic LEDs and
the U.S. Army's progress toward pilot-scale production of flexible
displays with improved efficiency. Currently they have a small
experimental display of 320 x 240 pixel resolution on a flexible
material known as polyethylene naphthalate. He estimates that within a
couple of years, a more manufacture-friendly model of a PDA-like
flexible display will exist.
Presentation PThA1; Thursday, June 4, 10:30 - 11 a.m.
WORLD'S HIGHEST-RESOLUTION COMMERCIAL SATELLITE
Since the early 1960s, super powerful spy satellites have been the stuff
of the military and intelligence communities. Now two U.S. companies
have launched commercial imaging satellites that offer the same sort of
space-based images of the Earth to the public. One of these companies,
GeoEye of Dulles, Va., launched a multi-million dollar satellite last
year, and it's the highest-resolution commercial imaging satellite in
the world.
From its vantage point of 425 miles in space, the 4,300-pound GeoEye-1
satellite orbits the Earth and focuses its powerful lens on the surface
below, snapping electronic images that can resolve objects on the ground
as small as 41 cm across (16 inches). That's approximately the size of
home plate on a baseball diamond. These images are typically processed
and sold to the military for mapping and to companies like Google, which
makes them available to the public through its platform Google Earth.
(Because of federal regulations, the publicly-available images are
slightly lower resolution -- approximately 50 cm).
In Baltimore at next week's CLEO/IQEC, GeoEye's Systems Engineering
Director Michael Madden will describe some of the satellite's key
features, such as the fact that it's the first commercial satellite with
military-grade star trackers, which along with GPS makes the imagery
from the satellite very accurate -- an important aspect for making
precise maps. He will also preview the satellite GeoEye-2, which is
expected to be launched around 2012 and would have a ground resolution
twice as fine as GeoEye-1.
These powerful public eyes in the sky have already had an impact. Madden
says for instance, a researcher at the University of California, San
Diego is using satellite imagery to search for the tomb of Genghis Khan
in Mongolia. A few months ago, one of the enduring photos taken during
U.S. President Barack Obama's inauguration was the image captured by
GeoEye-1 of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., which showed throngs
of people crowded together. In March 2009, the GeoEye-1 satellite
captured a close-up image of a North Korean missile sitting on the
launch pad just 25 minutes before launch. GeoEye-1 also provided a look
at the annual Cherry Blossom Festival held in Washington, D.C. From the
space photo, details were clear enough to resolve individual trees,
ripples on the Potomac River, and people and cars crowded along the
Tidal Basin, the area in downtown Washington, D.C. where the festival
takes place.
Presentation PWB4; Wednesday, June 3, 6:15 - 6:45 p.m.
MORE QUIET MIRRORS
In physics many subtle phenomena can be studied by allowing waves to
interfere with each other. In an interferometer, light waves travel by
two different paths, directed from place to place by strategically
places mirrors, and converge at a detector, where they produce a striped
interference pattern. The pattern can be read out to learn details of
the journey taken by the waves. Interferometry is used in many
endeavors, such as navigation, optical clocks, encryption, and in the
attempt to observe gravitational waves. The quality of the
interferometer depends on the positions of the mirrors being precisely
stable. Unfortunately, when experiments are carried out at room
temperature the smallest amount of heat present will agitate the
mirrors; a century ago Albert Einstein demonstrated the relation between
fluctuations ("Brownian motion" ) brought about by thermal energy.
H. Jeff Kimble of Caltech will describe a new effort to counteract
thermal noise and improve the sensitivity of interferometers. He and his
colleagues argue that a very slight thermally-induced movement of a
mirror's surface owing to thermal noise is accompanied by associated
changes in other physical parameters, such as the index of refraction of
the mirror. These correlated changes can be exploited to compensate, in
a coordinated way, the deleterious effects of the mirror surface's
motion.
Presentation CWI1; Wednesday, June 3, 4:45 - 5:15 p.m.
TERAHERTZ MODULATORS
Scientists have for the first time devised a multi-pixel modulator for
light waves at terahertz (THz, or 10^12 Hz) frequencies. The formal
study of THz radiation, which can be described as far-infrared light,
dates back many years, but has become increasingly widespread since
around 1990, when efficient methods for generating and detecting the
radiation become available. The expected applications include carrying
out biological spectroscopy and imaging buried structures in
semiconductors.
Rice University physicist Daniel Mittleman and his colleagues at Sandia
and Los Alamos National Labs use a metamaterial to turn a stream of THz
waves off and on. It's called a metamaterial since it consists of an
array of microscopic split metal rings. The rings can be controlled by
nearby electrodes; modulating the ring's capacitance, in turn, modulates
the radiation; that is, the THz light (sometimes called T rays) can be
switched so as to pass through or not. The modulator consists of 16
pixels in a 4 x 4 array. Mittleman reports that this is the first time
the wavefront of a THz beam has been under electrical control, which is
important because THz wavelengths may be good for imaging and this would
be the first step in allowing that by sending light across a whole
plane, not just as a linear burst. The switching speed, about 1 MHz,
isn't fast compared to today's quickest data transmissions. But,
Mittleman say, high bandwidth is not necessary for many of the imaging
tasks that will be carried out by T rays. A larger 32 x 32 pixel array
is now being designed.
Presentation CThX2; Thursday, June 4, 2:45 - 3 p.m.
WORLD'S HIGHEST-RESOLUTION PROJECTOR
If one were to stack 16 of the world's best high-definition projectors
side-by-side (and on top of each other), the combined image projected
would contain 33 megapixels. This is the resolution achieved by the
world's highest-resolution projector, soon to be unveiled by the company
Evans & Sutherland (E&S) of Salt Lake City, Utah.
Most projectors contain two-dimensional arrays of pixels, tic-tac-toe
arrangements of tiny microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices that
each light up with a particular color. Because fabricating 33 million of
these devices is a tricky endeavor, the E&S projector only uses a single
column of 4,000 pixels, powered by a beam of laser light. This
rapidly-changing vertical stripe of colors is swept across a screen
faster than the eye can see, so spectators see the illusion of a
projected 2-D image.
To create this projector, twice the resolution of any that currently
exists, the company had to develop powerful fiber lasers. These lasers,
discussed in Forrest Williams' talk, may have uses for other projects,
such as making anti-counterfeit identifiers or projecting artificial
stars into the night sky that can be used to calibrate astronomical
instruments.
The projector, which creates a 2:1 image twice as wide as it is high,
will be marketed to planetariums, simulations, and training companies
that currently wire multiple projectors together to display large images.
Presentation PThA2; Thursday, June 4, 11 - 11:30 a.m.
PICOSECOND OSCILLOSCOPE
An oscilloscope is a device for displaying signals that are too fast to
be seen by the human eye. Typically the signal consists of a voltage
level that changes quickly moment by moment (over millisecond to
nanosecond timescales). What is seen on the screen of the scope is a
waveform whose value is graphed along the vertical axis as a function of
the horizontal axis representing time. An electron beam, aimed at a
phosphorescent screen, is swept horizontally providing a light-trace on
the screen while, coincidentally, the instantaneous voltage of the input
signal is used to deflect the electron beam up or down, creating the
visible trace. The dynamic range of this whole process is the range of
voltage values that can be displayed; the other important feature is the
time resolution: how fine a time scale can be achieved. Conventional
analog television displays use comparable technology. A trace is swept
horizontally across the screen, but instead of deflecting the beam up
and down, the beam is interrupted or allowed to proceed toward the
phosphor screen, where the trace shows up as a bright or dark spot. The
display is then scanned across the screen again in a raster pattern to
build up a complete screen image (but so quickly that the human eye
doesn't notice it at a rate of 30 or 60 frames per second).
For performing high-end physics, ordinary oscilloscopes and televisions
aren't fast enough, and the deflection of a beam used to display an
image or a short-lived signal requires a different technology, which
sometimes goes by the name "streak camera." Because the electrons
comprising the beam are charged particles, the signals they carry suffer
unavoidable blurring where the signal strength is strongest, thereby
limiting the useful dynamic range. John Heebner and colleagues at
Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL) recently devised a solid-state
all-optical streak camera, the first to attain a time resolution near 1
picosecond while simultaneously preserving a wide dynamic range, 3000:1.
In his camera, the beam being deflected consists not of charged
electrons but of uncharged photons, which do not suffer from the
limitations of conventional streak cameras.
He achieves an unprecedented deflection rate of a light beam by sending
it through an ordinary planar waveguide whose optical properties can be
nearly instantaneously modified by a separate pump laser beam incident
from above. A sequential array of "transient" prisms is created by first
allowing the pump beam to pass through a serrated mask. When the pump
beam is properly synchronized to the signal beam to be recorded,
time-of-flight at the speed of light does the rest. Because later
portions of the signal encounter more prisms, that part of the signal is
deflected by a greater amount than the earlier portions of the signal
that had already advanced through the waveguide before the prisms turned
on. The prisms persist for the duration of the sweep and disappear in
time for the process to start again with the next trace. Each deflected
light trace is then focused onto an array of camera pixels. The light
level detected on the array thus preserves a recording, over time, of
the light beam's intensity.
Heebner's device, which he calls serrated light illumination for
deflection encoded recording (or SLIDER), can even be used to study
short bursts of light in the X-ray region of the light spectrum. This is
accomplished by first encoding the X-ray signal onto an optical beam
using an optical device (a Fabry-Perot cavity) that can be modulated at
picosecond timescales. This makes SLIDER potentially valuable for
monitoring the brilliant bursts of X-rays streaming from fusion targets
at the collision point where the multiple laser beams of LLNL's National
Ignition Facility (NIF) come together.
The benefit of the device is that it enables the recording of very fast
phenomena. As the world's fastest light deflector, it can be used as a
picosecond oscilloscope or for observing transient events like the
miniature fusion reaction that occurs at the National Ignition Facility.
Presentation CThW1; Thursday, June 4, 2:30 - 3 p.m.
CLEO/IQEC PLENARY SPEAKERS
Edward I. Moses, the principal associate director of the National
Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, will
present "The National Ignition Facility: Exploring Matter Under Extreme
Conditions" on Monday, June 1, focusing on NIF technical capabilities,
the National Ignition Campaign, and the new scientific opportunities in
materials science, astrophysics, and other areas of high–energy-density
science made available by NIF.
Federico Capasso, professor of applied physics at Harvard University,
will present "Quantum Cascade Lasers: Compact Widely Tailorable Light
Sources from 3 to 300 µm Wavelength" on Wednesday, June 3, tracing the
path from invention to exciting advances in the physics, applications
and commercialization of these revolutionary lasers, which cover the
mid- and far-ir spectrum and are broadly impacting sensing,
spectroscopy, and sub-wavelength photonics.
Alain Aspect of the Institut d'Optique in France will present "From
Bell's Inequalities to Entangled Qubits: A New Quantum Age?" on
Wednesday, June 3, about Bell's Theorem and the new field of quantum
information, where one uses entanglement between qubits to develop
conceptually new methods for processing and transmitting information.
ON-SITE PRESS INFORMATION
A Press Room will be located in the Pratt Street East room of the
Baltimore Convention Center. The Press Room will be open Sunday, May 31
from 12 - 4 p.m. and Monday, June 1 - Thursday, June 4 from 7:30 a.m. -
6 p.m. Those interested in obtaining a press badge for the conference
should register online at http://www.cleoconference.org/media_center/mediaregistrationform.aspx
or contact OSA's Colleen Morrison at 202.416.1437, cmorri@osa.org.
A press luncheon panel will take place Tuesday, June 2 at 12 p.m. in the
Baltimore Convention Center. The press luncheon will offer an
overarching perspective on significant new developments to be unveiled
during CLEO/IQEC. This year's luncheon topic is "Laser Applications:
Today and Tomorrow." To register for the press luncheon, contact OSA's
Colleen Morrison at cmorri@osa.org,
202.416.1437.
ABOUT CLEO/IQEC
With a distinguished history as one of the industry's leading events on
laser science, the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics and the
International Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/IQEC) is where laser
technology was first introduced. CLEO/IQEC combines the strength of
peer-reviewed scientific programming with an applications-focused
exhibition to showcase the present and future of this technology.
Sponsored by the American Physical Society's (APS) Laser Science
Division, the Institute of Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Photonics Society
and the Optical Society (OSA), CLEO/IQEC provides an educational forum,
complete with a dynamic Plenary, short courses, tutorials, workshops and
more, on topics as diverse as its attendee base whose broad spectrum of
interests range from biomedicine to defense to optical communications
and beyond. For more information, visit the conference's Web site at www.cleoconference.org.
The Optical Society
Colleen Morrison, 202-416-1437
cmorri@osa.org
American
Institute of Physics
Jason Socrates Bardi, 301-309-3091
jbardi@aip.org
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