Can light spin like a whirlwind? Researchers have now shown that it can. Scientists from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, the Military University of Technology, and the Institut Pascal CNRS at Université Clermont Auvergne have created swirling "optical tornadoes" inside an extremely small structure. The advance points to a new way of building miniature light sources with complex shapes, which could support simpler and more scalable photonic devices for optical communication and quantum technologies.
"Our solution combines several fields of physics, from quantum mechanics, through materials engineering, to optics and solid-state physics," explains Prof. Jacek Szczytko from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, the leader of the research group. "The inspiration came from systems known from atomic physics, where electrons can occupy different energy states. In photonics, a similar role is played by optical traps, which confine light instead of electrons."
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