Source: PHYSORG.COM
A freak wave at sea is a terrifying sight. Seven stories tall, wildly unpredictable, and incredibly destructive, such waves have been known to emerge from calm waters and swallow ships whole. But rogue waves of light -- rare and explosive flare-ups that are mathematically similar to their oceanic counterparts -- have recently been tamed by a group of researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Rogue light waves to work in order to produce brighter, more stable white light sources, a breakthrough in optics that may pave the way for better clocks, faster cameras, and more powerful radar and communications technologies.
An artist's representation of a rogue wave appearing
during supercontinuum generation. Credit: UCLARogue bursts of light were first spotted a year ago during the generation of a special kind of radiation called supercontinuum (SC). SC light is created by shooting laser pulses into crystals and optical fibers. Like the incandescent bulb in a lamp, it shines with a white light that spans an extremely broad spectrum. But unlike a bulb's soft diffuse glow, SC light maintains the brightness and directionality of a laser beam. This makes it suitable for a wide variety of applications -- a fact recognized by the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded in part to scientists who used SC light to measure atomic transitions with extraordinary accuracy.
Despite more than 40 years of research, SC light has proven to be difficult to control and prone to instability. Though rogue waves are not the cause of this instability, the UCLA researchers suspected that a better understanding of how noise in SC light triggers rogue waves could improve their control of this bright white light. Rogue waves occur randomly in SC light and are so short-lived that the team had to employ a new technique just to spot them. Although they are rare, they are more common than would be predicted by a bell curve distribution, governed instead by the same "L-shaped" statistics that describe other extreme events like volcanic eruptions and stock market crashes.
Rogue light waves to work in order to produce brighter, more stable white light sources, a breakthrough in optics that may pave the way for better clocks, faster cameras, and more powerful radar and communications technologies.
An artist's representation of a rogue wave appearing
during supercontinuum generation. Credit: UCLARogue bursts of light were first spotted a year ago during the generation of a special kind of radiation called supercontinuum (SC). SC light is created by shooting laser pulses into crystals and optical fibers. Like the incandescent bulb in a lamp, it shines with a white light that spans an extremely broad spectrum. But unlike a bulb's soft diffuse glow, SC light maintains the brightness and directionality of a laser beam. This makes it suitable for a wide variety of applications -- a fact recognized by the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded in part to scientists who used SC light to measure atomic transitions with extraordinary accuracy.
Despite more than 40 years of research, SC light has proven to be difficult to control and prone to instability. Though rogue waves are not the cause of this instability, the UCLA researchers suspected that a better understanding of how noise in SC light triggers rogue waves could improve their control of this bright white light. Rogue waves occur randomly in SC light and are so short-lived that the team had to employ a new technique just to spot them. Although they are rare, they are more common than would be predicted by a bell curve distribution, governed instead by the same "L-shaped" statistics that describe other extreme events like volcanic eruptions and stock market crashes.
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