Amazing stuff! This could be a breakthrough!
"Swiss researchers at ETH Zurich invented a new type of pixel that can both control and analyze light, a breakthrough that could dramatically improve digital photography."
"In brief
- Pixels create images on screens or capture them in cameras. Until now, however, there have been no pixels that could do both.
- Researchers have now developed a new kind of pixel that can both create and analyse images and patterns.
- In the future, these pixels could be used to realise two-way camera–displays.
In 1927, the term „picture element“, later abbreviated to „pixel“, appeared for the first time in the American technology magazine Wireless World. ...
These pixels can both steer light and analyse it. Not only the intensity of the light, but also its oscillation phase and polarisation can be controlled and analysed. ...
Patters and images from overlapping light waves
The new results ... are based on a fundamental physical effect: the so-called interference of light waves. When light is scattered by a surface, the waves originating from different points on the surface overlap. The shape of the surface determines the oscillation phases with which the waves propagate further. If the phases are equal, the light waves reinforce each other, but if they are opposed, the waves cancel out. ...
use this effect to precisely control light with wave-shaped sculpted surfaces. They developed this processing method, which is precise to within a few nanometres, already a few years ago. For steering, the pixel—that is, the area on the chip where the material has been processed—first transforms the incoming light into a surface wave (a so-called surface plasmon polariton) propagating along the surface of the chip.
At a different position within the pixel, the surface wave is scattered back out of the material as a light wave. Through interference of the light waves, patterns and images can be created. Using mathematical Fourier analysis, the researchers can calculate what these images will look like and what kind of surface pattern is needed for a specific image. ...."
From the abstract:
"Digital cameras and displays use picture elements (pixels) that perform a single function: detecting or emitting light intensity. To exploit the full information content of electromagnetic waves, more advanced elements are required. This has driven the development of multifunctional components that, for example, simultaneously detect and emit intensity or extract intensity and spectral information.
However, no pixel exists that both senses and generates optical wavefronts with full control over amplitude, phase and polarization, limiting bidirectional control and feedback of sophisticated light fields.
Here we present a route to such pixels by demonstrating a versatile platform of miniaturized diffractive elements based on Fourier optics.
We use plasmonic surface waves, which propagate coherently and efficiently across metallic surfaces. When these plasmons are launched towards wavy microstructures designed with simple Fourier analysis, arbitrary and background-free optical wavefronts are generated. Conversely, incoming light can be sensed, and its amplitude, phase and polarization can be fully characterized.
By combining or superposing several such components, we create multifunctional ‘Fourier pixels’ that provide compact and accurate control over the optical field. Our approach, which we extend to photonic waveguide modes, establishes a scalable, universal architecture for vectorially programmable pixels with applications in adaptive optics, holographic displays, optical communication and quantum information processing."
Researchers in Switzerland invent a new type of pixel "Pixels either control light or analyze it. This one does both."
A new type of pixel (original news release) "Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed pixels that can not only create images, but also analyse them. In the future, this could lead to the development of devices that function as camera and display at the same time."
Fourier pixels for bidirectional light control (open access)
The coloured logo was created using the new ETH researchers‘ Fourier pixels. The letter “E” is roughly 1 millimetre tall on the camera.
Fig. 1: Fourier pixels for generating light with arbitrary amplitude and phase.
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