This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The world would look radically different without rulers and measuring tapes that fit into a pocket. Carpenters, fashion designers and engineers rely on these trusty tools to check the size of everything from a wooden board to a fabric swatch.
But physicists who work with light lack that same convenience for one of the basic measurements of their craft. They routinely need to measure and compare the frequencies—colors—of the light waves they are using. To date, they have lacked a similarly pocket-sized tool for routine measurements, and they make do with cumbersome equipment that crowds their lab space and is far from portable.
The standard tool for measuring the frequency of light is called an optical frequency comb. This device produces a rainbow of different frequencies of light, all spaced at regular intervals like the tick marks on a measuring tape. Frequency combs let researchers measure the difference between distinct frequencies and are crucial for many experiments and measurements that use light.
Large lab setups have proven the usefulness of frequency combs by enabling the creation of the most precise clocks in the world—atomic clocks—as well as many other applications. Researchers have been seeking smaller optical frequency combs both to make their lives easier and to provide the basis for new light-based technologies. For instance, portable atomic clocks could help map underground variations in mineral deposits and enable navigation systems that don't rely on GPS satellite signals.
Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) researchers have worked with an international collaboration to develop and demonstrate a new type of frequency comb. The new design eliminates the need for bulky equipment while also making it simple to adapt a single device to a variety of practical measurement tasks. The researchers describe the advances behind their frequency comb and its performance on common tasks in an article published in Nature.
To demonstrate the adaptability of their compact device, they used it with a variety of light sources to test its capability at tasks that are the bread and butter of optical frequency combs. The result builds on a decade of research that JQI research scientist Grégory Moille and JQI fellow and co-director Kartik Srinivasan have put into miniature optical frequency combs that fit on a portable chip. Their new approach grew out of a partnership with a team led by Miro Erkintalo, who is a researcher at the University of Auckland (UoA) in New Zealand and the Dodd-Walls Center for Photonic and Quantum Technologies, to explore a new way to make optical frequency combs.
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