Vacuum is often thought of as empty, but in fact it is teeming with fleeting energy fluctuations—virtual photons popping in and out of existence that can interact with matter, giving rise to new, potentially useful properties.
Researchers use optical cavities, structures made of mirrors facing one another, to confine these fluctuations, harnessing their effects to engineer new forms of matter.
Conventional optical cavities boost fluctuations, or vacuum fields, for both right- and left-handed circularly polarized light. Rice University researchers and collaborators have developed a new cavity design that selectively enhances the quantum vacuum fluctuations of circularly polarized light in a single direction, achieving chirality—a feat that typically requires the use of a strong magnetic field.
According to a study published in Nature Communications, a research team led by Junichiro Kono used lightly doped indium antimonide to construct the chiral cavity. The researchers also conducted comprehensive theoretical investigations to predict how the new cavity design would transform the properties of materials placed inside it.
They found that graphene—a strong, lightweight single-atom-thick layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice pattern—would be transformed into a special insulator useful in quantum computing applications.
To read more, click here.