Related papers: Material Limitations on the Detection Limit in Ref…
The dark-matter candidates of particle physics invariably possess electromagnetic interactions, if only via quantum fluctuations. Taken en masse, dark matter can thus engender an index of refraction which deviates from its vacuum value. Its…
The increasing scale of cryogenic detector arrays for sub-millimeter and millimeter wavelength astrophysics has led to the need for large aperture, high index of refraction, low loss, cryogenic refracting optics. Silicon with n = 3.4, low…
The set of realizable refractive indices as a function of frequency is considered. For passive media we give bounds for the refractive index variation in a finite bandwidth. Special attention is given to the loss and index variation in the…
Detection of UV photons is becoming increasingly necessary with the use of noble gases and liquids in elementary particle experiments. Cerenkov light in crystals and glasses, scintillation light in neutrino, dark matter, and rare decay…
We entertain the use of light dependent resistors as a viable option as measuring sensors in optics laboratory experiments or classroom demonstrations. The main advantages of theses devices are essentially very low cost, easy handling and…
The sensitivity of future gravitational wave (GW) observatories will be limited by thermal noise in a wide frequency band. To reduce thermal noise, the European GW observatory Einstein GW Telescope (ET) is suggested to use crystalline…
We demonstrate that there is a fundamental limit to the sensitivity of phase-based detection of atoms with light for a given maximum level of allowable spontaneous emission. This is a generalisation of previous results for two-level and…
We report the observation of imaging beyond the diffraction limit due to bound surface states in negative refraction photonic crystals. We achieve an effective negative index figure-of-merit [-Re(n)/Im(n)] of at least 380, ~125x improvement…
Microscopes and various forms of interferometers have been used for decades in optical metrology of objects that are typically larger than the wavelength of light {\lambda}. However, metrology of subwavelength objects was deemed impossible…
Einstein Telescope (ET) is expected to achieve sensitivity improvements exceeding an order of magnitude compared to current gravitational-wave detectors. The rigorous characterization in optical birefringence of materials and coatings has…
The specular reflectivity of slow, metastable neon atoms from a silicon surface was found to increase markedly when the flat surface was replaced by a grating structure with parallel narrow ridges. For a surface with ridges that have a…
We experimentally characterize the positions of the diffraction maxima of a phase grating on a screen, for laser light at oblique incidence (so-called off-plane diffraction or conical diffraction). We discuss the general case of off-plane…
A method to engineer the refractive indices of functional materials (TiO2, ZnO, SnO2, SiO2), by nanostructuring in the deep sub-wavelength regime (<20nm), is presented. Block-copolymer templating combined with a wet processing route is used…
The major cornerstone of future ground-based astronomy is imaging and spectroscopy at the diffraction limit using adaptive optics. To exploit the potential of current AO systems, we have begun a survey around bright stars to study…
The sensitivity of a refractive index sensor based on an optical bound state in the continuum is considered. Applying Zel'dovich perturbation theory we derived an analytic expression for bulk sensitivity of an all-dielectic sensor utilizing…
Hints of direct dark matter detection coming from the DAMA, CoGeNT experiments point toward light dark matter with isospin-violating and possibly inelastic couplings. However an array of astrophysical constraints are rapidly closing the…
Our Moon is a natural giant direct-detection target for constraining dark matter. By considering the dark matter capture rate of the Moon, we obtain some constraints of the spin-independent elastic scattering cross section of dark matter…
In this paper we explore the effect of $\delta$-ray emission, fluctuations in th e signal deposition on the detection of charged particles in silicon-based detec tors. We show that these two effects ultimately limit the resolution that can…
We propose an optical read-out scheme allowing a demonstration of principle of information extraction below the diffraction limit. This technique, which could lead to improvement in data read-out density onto optical discs, is independent…
We place bounds on long-lived primordial relics using measurements of the diffuse gamma ray spectrum from EGRET and COMPTEL. Bounds are derived for both radiative and hadronic decays with stronger bounds applying for the latter decay mode.…