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Optical 'whispering galleries'
"Whispering gallery" sensors can detect a single nanoparticle. These particles disturb light waves in fiber-taper coupled microresonators.
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The geometry of some large rooms with domed ceilings can magnify softly spoken sounds. The effect makes whispers easily heard by listeners outside of normal earshot. Two famous examples of such places are New York's Grand Central Terminal and St. Paul's Cathedral in London. This is called a "whispering gallery," and U.S. National Science Foundation-supported engineers are using the science behind this phenomenon to detect airborne viruses, only instead of sound waves they use light.
Researchers have created an optical whispering gallery that uses light to interact with a single particle over thousands to millions of times to significantly enhance interactions between the light and the sub-wavelength particle. The unprecedented sensitivity of this tiny, on-chip device proves to be a big breakthrough in the optical sensing of airborne particles and viruses.
The work was supported by NSF grant ECCS 0954941.
Learn more about this research in the Washington University news story Tiny sensor takes measure of nanoparticles.(Date of Image: 2010)
Credit: Nano/Micro Photonics Laboratory, Electrical and Systems Engineering Department, Washington University, Saint Louis
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