(ORDO NEWS) — In 1801, the British scientist Thomas Young performed the double-slit experiment that went down in the history of physics.
By passing light through two slits in a material, he showed that light behaves like a wave while traveling along different paths at the same time. intervene in a predictable manner after recombination.
Since that pioneering moment, the experiment has been repeated to demonstrate that electromagnetic radiation exhibits both wave and particle behavior.
In other words, light can behave like balls rolling down a slope, or like ripples in a pond, depending on how they are measured.
It’s not just photons that work this way.
Scientists have used similar setups to show that electrons, neutrons, and entire atoms behave the same way, establishing the basic tenet of quantum physics as a theory based on probability.
Now scientists have recreated Jung’s experiment using a modern twist.
Instead of a pair of slots separated in space, they used “time slots” created by rapidly adjusting the reflectivity of a material, testing the ability of a light wave to interfere with its own past and future.
“Our experiment reveals more of the fundamental nature of light and serves as a stepping stone to the creation of advanced materials that can precisely control light in both space and time,” says physicist Riccardo Sapienza from Imperial College London, UK.
Sapienza and colleagues used a thin layer of indium tin oxide, a material used in smartphone screens.
The laser pulses changed its reflectivity to create two separate periods when light hitting the material could be measured, providing different paths in time where one wave of light could interfere with itself.
These time differences changed the frequency of the light as it hit the material, with interference between different waves creating different colors rather than differences in brightness.
Scientists have studied this interference pattern to observe the wave-like behavior of light.
“The double time interval experiment opens the door to a completely new spectroscopy capable of resolving the time structure of a light pulse,” says physicist John Pendry of Imperial College London.
Interestingly, the slits opened much faster than scientists expected, from 1 to 10 femtoseconds (quadrillionths of a second).
That the experiment outperformed theoretical simulations suggests that part of that simulation needs to be rethought: materials don’t necessarily interact with light in exactly the way scientists thought (by changing intensity or speed, for example).
Having a material that can change its response to light in minutes could be useful for developing new technologies and learning more about the mysteries of quantum physics.
This will also be useful on a large scale when studying phenomena such as black holes.
The team then wants to test their “history of time” on another material, an atomic crystal, where the atoms form a distinct structure, which could lead to rapid improvements in electronics.
“The concept of time crystals could lead to ultra-fast parallel optical switches,” says physicist Stefan Mayer of Imperial College London.
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