Optical Waves Wash Photons Aside

Albert Einstein was born on the day James Clerk Maxwell died. Maxwell had come up with the equations that describe the behavior of electric and magnetic fields and mathematically validated the profound conclusion that light was the visible manifestation of a whole spectrum of electromagnetic waves (from relatively low frequencies later assigned to AM and FM radio, to higher frequencies like microwave, millimeter wave, IR, visible light, ultraviolet, X-ray and beyond).

"In 1905, Albert Einstein suggested that light comes not only in waves but in tiny packets or quanta of light that were in 1926 dubbed photons. Just before he died, however, Einstein regarded the concept of the quanta and all of it's unsettling implications as heuristic at best: provisional and incomplete and not fully compatible with his own intimations of underlying reality." (*) However, at the time, Einstein believed that these packets or bundles of energy came only in fixed amounts, determined by Planck's revolutionary new constant, rather than being divisible or having a continuous range of values.

A “photoelectric effect” is observed when light is shined on a metal surface, causing electrons to be knocked loose and emitted. Unexplained by wave theory at that time was the fact that electrons emit much more energy with the application of higher frequency light (e.g. from infrared to ultraviolet frequencies). This observation led Einstein to conclude that light is made up of quanta and cannot be understood solely as a continuous wave. Composed as independent energy quanta, he assumed light behaves thermodynamically with energy calculated in accord with Planck's constant. His observation associated with the photoelectric effect earned Einstein his doctoral degree and later the Nobel Prize.

Despite his success, Einstein and others at the time, viewed the quanta as "perplexing, pesky, mysterious, and sometimes a maddening quirk in the cosmos." (*) In particular, was the quanta of light a property of the light in a vacuum or the property of the process of light interracting with other materials?

Even though Einstein's equation for the photoelectric effect was proven to be accurate, he found the quanta representation so untenable, that he no longer held it to be true. He wrote, even after the advent of quantum mechanics theory in the 1920's, near his death, "all these 50 years of pondering have not brought me any closer to answering the question, what are light quanta?" (*) Einstein thus represented to his dying days that "the wave theory of light which operates with continuous spatial function, has worked well in the representation of purely optical phenomena and will probablly never be replaced by another theory." (*)

100 years after the birth of the "photon" some bright ex-Disney scientists at Creative Technology (C-Tech LLC) are intent on demonstrating that Einstein’s instincts regarding the wave properties of light will lead to fundamental technology insights and a host of revolutionary optical products.

The promise of C-Tech's insights include a new generation of optical devices using direct detection and light generation based on wave-based imaging. Wave-based imaging systems process light similar to microwave synthetic phase-array radar, and can apply coherent phase based interference techniques for analysis, rather than conventional photon, non-coherent counting. Stepping away form the color-challenged limitations of photon detection, the synthesis and analysis of light in the wave domain promises a range of breakthrough products. C-Tech is currently designing lensless, filterless cameras capable of accurate and ultra-sensitive spectral imaging on a pixel level via lightwave phased arrays and light engines generating true color for filterless displays and hyper-accurate, extremely rapid spectrometry.

Included on their product roadmap are spectrometers that detect phase (as well as frequency and intensity) for a range of molecular and chemical analytic products; lensless synthetic-aperture cameras working in the IR-VIS-UV domain, capable of image steering, focus, zoom, phase and frequency detection; missile identification and tracking jamming devices that rapidly scan wide ranges of the spectrum generated as narrow-spectral beams to intercept and confuse optical-based guidance systems; and remote rapid health and threat detection for biohazards and explosives based on ultra-spectral surface molecular analysis for substances such as anthrax, nitrates, and pathogens.

C-tech has prototyped its patented optical synthesizer light engine at Penn State University. Their first device generates any visible light color in one nanometer bandwidths within 0.03 millisecond, without using energy-absorbing bandpass limiting filters or arrays of individual lasers. This prototype is the basis for both their ultra-spectral spectrometer and display device design plans. C-tech believes that combined with other proprietary techniques the team may achieve spectra narrower than 0.1 nanometer.

C-tech's spectroscopic technology employs state-of-the-art optical and electromagnetic components in truly innovative ways. Their designs allow continuous spectral irradiation (necessary for combined analytical techniques such as Raman plus fluorescence) within seconds instead of minutes or hours, sweeping the spectrum at speeds 100 times faster than conventional devices. Future products will detect and emit extremely narrow bandwidths over a wide range of frequencies, from the far IR through the visible to the far UV. The vision includes effective spectrometry within the domain of instant field analysis for threat detection and health care.

C-tech has modeled a nanostructure antenna configured in lightwave dimensions (applying Maxwell's equations) on University of Delaware's supercomputer. These phased nano-arrays would function as Fourier transform mechanisms, applying processing instead of optics for focusing and angular reception, eventually directly detecting phase as well as frequency and intensity. C-tech's design offers vastly improved sensitivity, low noise, very high dynamic range, and extremely narrow spectral bandwidth over a continuous, broad spectral range. In principle, these sensors may also detect low-emission X-rays lying within a narrow spectrum, ultimately resulting in the first “true color" X-ray imaging.
The work at C-tech began with a study that sought to understand the way the human eye perceives light, and continues as one of the “big ideas” of our time. Working together, these optical generating and analyzing devices have the potential to revolutionize imaging and spectral analysis. Their technology can reduce the size, weight and power consumption of a whole generation of optical and UV devices needed by the military , homeland security and the health industry for a whole range of functions.

* from Einstein by Walter Isaacson, Simon & Schuster