Week 4 Step 2 Gadgets of the Future

   Japanese physicists have found an opportunity to create small holographic images of objects that preserve the natural color with white backlighting and examining all angles.

  The process of hologram recording, implemented by the Japanese, it is standard and based on the "resignation" of the two waves, one of which goes directly from the source and the other is reflected from the sample. The resulting interference pattern retains a layer of photoresist is deposited on a glass plate. Certainly, when writing, you can use just three laser (red, green and blue), but the authors treated one by changing the geometry of the experiment three times and repeating the exposure.

  Selected scholars method of image reconstruction, by contrast, is not trivial. On a layer of photoresist are deposited metallic - gold or silver - cover, while "playing" the hologram it was irradiated with white light at three different angles. The meaning of this is to create a resonance condition for surface plasmon polaritons on separate wavelengths.

  Let us explain: surface plasmon polaritons are called quasiparticles, arising from the interaction of photons and electrons (surface plasmons) in metal, ie a fall of white light on the workpiece. These quasiparticles are distributed in the form of surface electromagnetic waves along the interface and, most importantly, can themselves be converted into photons, by which revolutionized physics and the red, green and blue versions of the hologram and got full-color image.

  The testing procedures were established and quality small - measuring about two inches - the hologram apple, flower, classic origami (crane) and some other objects.

  However, for practical use of technology is not suitable: it is not very cost effective, yields only static hologram and does not scale. "I'm more interested in the physics of the process - said one of the study participants Satoshi Kawata (Satoshi Kawata), representing the University of Osaka. - No one thought that the plasmons can be used for imaging, as we have shown that it's real. "