Photograph an object with a light that does not illuminate
The study of the properties of light and open applications seems endless as shown recently in a group of researchers from Vienna, in an article published in Nature magazine (available free from arXiv). In Euclid Feynman by Leonardo da Vinci, Descartes and Huygens, the theory of light and images has never ceased to amaze us as we were of geometrical optics theory wave Fresnel and Maxwell finally to the theory of photons Einstein. In recent decades, is quantum optics, which is at the front of the stage just behind the multiple applications of the theory of image processing.
If the quantum entanglement of photons already had applications in quantum cryptography and in the context of research on quantum information and foundations of physics, now here enters the field of images, allowing the new magic tricks .. . quantum. In this case, the image of an object is obtained from photons that have not interacted with it, and even a different wavelength from those they are entangled and which are introduced in the interaction with the object. This new technique makes it possible to form images of objects in the same band of wavelengths given if there are no tools to actually take a picture of these objects.
A new imaging technique for quantum biology
But how physicists have taken the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology (VCQ) and the University of Vienna to accomplish such a feat? As often with quantum entanglement, they did it with a laser and nonlinear optical phenomena that can be generated with some crystals.
In fact, there are linear crystal means providing two beams at the output of entangled photon pairs with an input of a photon beam produced by a laser. As part of the experiment conducted by the researchers, a laser beam (green color on the picture above) to consider as first red drops in a splitter to give two beams so that each then is directed to a nonlinear crystal. At the output of each crystal, so it is not a photon beam red (yellow in the picture) and a beam of photons of longer wavelength, for example in the infrared. Red photons are entangled photon pairs with infrared.
The infrared beam from the first crystal is then directed onto the object to be examined characteristics within a band infrared hard, in any case, a measurable pickup device image. The infrared photons scattered by the object and then enters the second crystal where they combine with infrared photons generated by the arrival of the second laser beam in the experiment originally produced in the separator outlet. Quantum entanglement then allows the information carried by infrared photons from the object to be mirrored end up as a correlation with red photons emerging from the second glass. Then, the outgoing beams of red photons in the first and second glass is recombined. Magically, then an image of the object can be formed in the red band of the spectrum, but that is the image we wanted to achieve in the infrared spectral range. Finally we got around the obstacle of the lack of effective detector in the spectral band where we wanted to carry out observations and have an image of an object with the light that is never made direct interaction with the object.
Physicists believe that this imaging technique with quantum entanglement of photons must be versatile enough so that one day could have applications in biology and medicine.
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