#electric fields

Helical liquid crystals can flip light's chirality under ultralow electric fields

The direction in which the electromagnetic field of circularly polarized light rotates can be easily reversed by applying a voltage, RIKEN researchers have demonstrated. This could enable a new generation of optical devices based on circularly polarized light. The work is published in two papers in the journal Advanced Materials. Why circular polarization matters Polarized sunglasses produce light that is polarized along a single direction. But some special devices can generate light with a polarization that rotates as the light propagates. Such circularly polarized light is useful for many applications, including spectroscopy, satellite communications, stereoscopy and microscopy.

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(An image from the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope. (Image credit: U.S. National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope))

"Weather on Earth can be wild, but it's not the only kind of weather we have to deal with. Space weather — all the winds and particles streaming off the sun — can have major impacts on Earth and human infrastructure. In the worst cases, this can mean dangerous disruption to our power grids and communications satellites.

To help us predict these space storms, astronomers have a newly improved space weatherman — and it's the best one to date. The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST), perched atop the Hawaiian mountain of Haleakalā, is the world's largest telescope used for studying the sun and predicting these storms.

(The debut image from the Inouye telescope's Visible Tunable Filter (VTF) camera shows a sunspot cluster many times larger than the continental United States (Image credit: VTF/KIS/NSF/NSO/AURA))

The team behind this technological marvel recently hit a major milestone, finally turning on one of DKIST's most powerful cameras — known as the Visible Tunable Filter, or VTF — after more than a decade working on its creation."

"VTF provides more than just a simple snapshot. It captures images at multiple wavelengths of light to measure a spectrum, while also gathering information on how the light's electric field is oriented (known as polarization). These extra perspectives on the sun help reveal details of the solar surface, magnetic field and plasma that are otherwise invisible, informing our predictions for space weather and solar flares.

During just one observation of the sun, this instrument can collect more than 10 million spectra — graphs of the light's intensity over different wavelengths — which help scientists determine how hot the solar atmosphere is, how strong the sun's magnetic field is and more."

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