Controlling light in a network
Networks are now a part of everyone’s daily life: social networks, transportation networks, the electricity grid and high speed data networks. Now networks also are a key element embedded inside a new type of artificial photonic material called a resonant guided wave network. The first ever resonant guided wave network, which is being reported in the April 2010 issue of Physical Review Letters, consists of dense interconnected arrays of subwavelength plasmonic waveguides. The network generates optical dispersion via phase-coherent splitting and recombination at waveguide junctions. By manipulating the phase relationships between guided waves in the network, it is possible to generate dispersive slow waves and photonic bandgaps, giving photonic materials researchers a new platform on which to manipulate light.
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LG12676
Reversing the Brazil Nut Effect
By vibrating bi-mixtures, the large particles usually rise to the top of bed, a phenomenon of "Brazil Nut" separation, while the reverse separation occurs in gas-fluidized bed. Researchers who introduced a gas flow into a vibrating bed from its perforated bottom and studied the separation during the transition process from "BN" separation to its reverse have found new, interesting phenomena which cannot be explained by present known mechanisms. They tried using a new model to clarify the mechanisms of size separation, especially the effects of gas flow.
