You can tell a lot about a material based on the type of light shining at it: Optical light illuminates a material's surface, while X-rays reveal its internal structures and infrared captures a material's radiating heat. Now, MIT physicists have used terahertz light to reveal inherent, quantum vibrations in a superconducting material, which have not been observable until now.
Terahertz light is a form of energy that lies between microwaves and infrared radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum. It oscillates over a trillion times per second—just the right pace to match how atoms and electrons naturally vibrate inside materials. Ideally, this makes terahertz light the perfect tool to probe these motions.
But while the frequency is right, the wavelength—the distance over which the wave repeats in space—is not. Terahertz waves have wavelengths hundreds of microns long. Because the smallest spot that any kind of light can be focused into is limited by its wavelength, terahertz beams cannot be tightly confined.
As a result, a focused terahertz beam is physically too large to interact effectively with microscopic samples, simply washing over these tiny structures without revealing fine detail.
In a paper appearing in the journal Nature, the scientists report that they have developed a new terahertz microscope that compresses terahertz light down to microscopic dimensions. This pinpoint of terahertz light can resolve quantum details in materials that were previously inaccessible.
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