(Press-News.org) By Shawn Ballard
Optical sensors serve as the backbone of numerous scientific and technological endeavors, from detecting gravitational waves to imaging biological tissues for medical diagnostics. These sensors use light to detect changes in properties of the environment they’re monitoring, including chemical biomarkers and physical properties like temperature. A persistent challenge in optical sensing has been enhancing sensitivity to detect faint signals amid noise.
New research from Lan Yang, the Edwin H. & Florence G. Skinner Professor in the Preston M. Green Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, unlocks the power of exceptional points (EPs) for advanced optical sensing. In a study published April 5 in Science Advances, Yang and first author Wenbo Mao, a doctoral student in Yang’s lab, showed that these unique EPs – specific conditions in systems where extraordinary optical phenomena can occur – can be deployed on conventional sensors to achieve a striking sensitivity to environmental perturbations.
Yang and Mao developed an EP-enhanced sensing platform that overcomes the limitations of previous approaches. Unlike traditional methods that require modifications to the sensor itself, their innovative system features an EP control unit that can plug into physically separated external sensors. This configuration allows EPs to be tuned solely through adjustments to the control unit, allowing for ultrahigh sensitivity without the need for complex modifications to the sensor.
“We’ve implemented a novel platform that can impart EP enhancement to conventional optical sensors,” Yang said. “This system represents a revolutionary extension of EP-enhanced sensing, significantly expanding its applicability and universality. Any phase-sensitive sensor can acquire improved sensitivity and reduced detection limit by connecting to this configuration. Simply by tuning the control unit, this EP configuration can adapt to various sensing scenarios, such as environmental detection, health monitoring and biomedical imaging.”
By decoupling the sensing and control functions, Yang and Mao have effectively skirted the stringent physical requirements for operating sensors at EPs that have so far hindered their widespread adoption. This clears the way for EP enhancement to be applied to a wide range of conventional sensors – including ring resonators, thermal and magnetic sensors, and sensors that pick up vibrations or detect perturbations in biomarkers – vastly improving the detection limit of sensors scientists are already using. With the control unit set to an EP, the sensor can operate differently – not at an EP – and still reap the benefits of EP enhancement.
As a proof-of-concept, Yang’s team tested a system’s detection limit, or ability to detect weak perturbations over system noise. They demonstrated a six-fold reduction in the detection limit of a sensor using their EP-enhanced configuration compared to the conventional sensor.
“With this work, we’ve shown that we can significantly enhance our ability to detect perturbations that have weak signals,” Mao said. “We’re now focused on bringing that theory to broad applications. I’m specifically focused on medical applications, especially working to enhance magnetic sensing, which could be used to improve MRI technology. Currently, MRIs require a whole room with careful temperature control. Our EP platform could be used to enhance magnetic sensing to enable portable, bedside MRI.”
###
Mao W, Fu Z, Li Y, Li F, and Yang L. Exceptional-point-enhanced phase sensing. Science Advances, April 5, 2024. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adl5037
This project is supported in part by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). The authors acknowledge the Institute of Materials Science & Engineering (IMSE) at Washington University in St. Louis for the use of instruments, financial support and staff assistance.
END
Innovative sensing platform unlocks ultrahigh sensitivity in conventional sensors
Lan Yang and her team have developed new plug-and-play hardware to dramatically enhance the sensitivity of optical sensors
2024-04-05
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Dinosaur study challenges Bergmann’s rule
2024-04-05
When you throw dinosaurs into the mix, sometimes you find that a rule simply isn’t.
A new study led by scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the University of Reading calls into question Bergmann’s rule, an 1800s-era scientific principle stating that animals in high-latitude, cooler climates tend to be larger than close relatives living in warmer climates.
The fossil record shows otherwise.
“Our study shows that the evolution of diverse body sizes in dinosaurs and mammals cannot be reduced to simply being a function of latitude or temperature,” said Lauren Wilson, a UAF graduate student and a lead author ...
NRL charters Navy’s quantum inertial navigation path to reduce drift
2024-04-05
WASHINGTON – U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) researchers have developed a patent-pending Continuous 3D-Cooled Atom Beam Interferometer derived from a patented cold and continuous beam of atoms to explore atom-interferometry-based inertial measurement systems as a path to reduce drift in Naval navigation systems.
Inertial navigation is a self-contained navigation technique in which measurements provided by accelerometers and gyroscopes are used to track the position and orientation of an object relative to a known starting point, orientation and velocity. Quantum inertial navigation is a new field of research and ...
Portsmouth researchers enable detection of remarkable gravitational-wave signal
2024-04-05
Researchers from the University of Portsmouth’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation (ICG) have helped to detect a remarkable gravitational-wave signal, which could hold the key to solving a cosmic mystery.
The discovery is from the latest set of results announced today (5 April) by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration, which comprises more than 1,600 scientists from around the world, including members of the ICG, that seeks to detect gravitational waves and use them for exploration of fundamentals of science.
In May 2023, shortly after ...
Common loons threatened by declining water clarity
2024-04-05
The Common Loon, an icon of the northern wilderness, is under threat from climate change due to reduced water clarity, according to a new study authored by Chapman University professor, Walter Piper. The study, published April 1 in Ecology, followed up an earlier paper that showed substantial reproductive decline in the author’s study area in northern Wisconsin.
The paper is the first clear evidence demonstrating an effect of climate change on this charismatic species. Specifically, the paper shows that July rainfall results in reduced July water clarity in loon territories. Reduced water clarity, in turn, ...
Can language models read the genome? This one decoded mRNA to make better vaccines.
2024-04-05
The same class of artificial intelligence that made headlines coding software and passing the bar exam has learned to read a different kind of text — the genetic code.
That code contains instructions for all of life’s functions and follows rules not unlike those that govern human languages. Each sequence in a genome adheres to an intricate grammar and syntax, the structures that give rise to meaning. Just as changing a few words can radically alter the impact of a sentence, small variations in a biological sequence can make a huge ...
In the evolution of walking, the hip bone connected to the rib bones
2024-04-05
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Before the evolution of legs from fins, the axial skeleton — including the bones of the head, neck, back and ribs — was already going through changes that would eventually help our ancestors support their bodies to walk on land. A research team including a Penn State biologist completed a new reconstruction of the skeleton of Tiktaalik, the 375-million-year-old fossil fish that is one of the closest relatives to limbed vertebrates. The new reconstruction shows that the fish’s ribs likely attached to its pelvis, an innovation thought to be crucial to supporting the body and for the eventual evolution of walking.
A paper describing the new ...
Groundbreaking for new building named for former Sen. Roy Blunt held at Fisher Delta Research, Extension and Education Center
2024-04-05
A groundbreaking was held Friday, April 5, for the Roy Blunt Soil Testing and Research Laboratory at the University of Missouri’s Fisher Delta Research, Extension and Education Center (FD-REEC) in Portageville, Mo.
“As a longtime Delta Day attendee and Delta Center advocate, I’m pleased to have been part of spearheading a new facility that will support existing university programs while inspiring research among future generations of students,” former Sen. Blunt said. “It is an honor to have my name connected with this world-class facility ...
"The Fold", a new book from the SCA's Laura U. Marks offers a philosophy for living in an infinitely connected cosmos
2024-04-05
From star-stuff to software; hoagies to humans, each entity is alive and occupies its own private place in the cosmos.
Grant Strate University Professor in SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts (SCA) Laura U. Marks’ new book The Fold offers a practical philosophy and aesthetic theory for living in an infinitely connected cosmos. Analyzing fiction, film, interactive media, and everyday situations, Marks outlines methods for detecting and augmenting the connections between each living entity and the cosmos.
The Fold shows it ...
Discovery points path to flash-like memory for storing qubits
2024-04-05
By Jade Boyd
Special Rice News
Rice University physicists have discovered a phase-changing quantum material — and a method for finding more like it — that could potentially be used to create flash-like memory capable of storing quantum bits of information, or qubits, even when a quantum computer is powered down.
Phase-changing materials have been used in commercially available non-volatile digital memory . In rewritable DVDs, for example, a laser is used to heat minute bits of material that cools to form either crystals or amorphous clumps. Two phases ...
Globalization in Photonics: an IEEE Photonics Journal Special Issue
2024-04-05
The IEEE Photonics Journal, the IEEE Photonics Society’s open access journal providing rapid publication of top-quality peer-reviewed papers at the forefront of photonics research, has released a Special Issue on "Globalization in Photonics", which provides a several detailed overviews of various worldwide developments in photonics. This all-invited special issue is a collection based on a series of presentations from the “Symposium on Globalization in Photonics Research & Development” at the ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
Heart rate changes predict depression treatment success with magnetic brain stimulation
Genetics pioneer transforms global depression research through multi-omics discoveries
MDMA psychiatric applications synthesized: Comprehensive review examines PTSD treatment and emerging therapeutic indications
Psychedelics offer new therapeutic framework for stress-related psychiatric disorders
Brain cell discoveries reshape understanding of psychiatric disorders
Mom’s voice boosts language-center development in preemies’ brains, study finds
Development of silicon ultrasound patch achieves both eco-friendliness and performance enhancement
Measles immunity 90% in BC’s Lower Mainland
Women’s brain regions may lose ability to synchronize after sexual assault
Quitting smoking, even late in life, linked to slower cognitive decline
Critical raw materials are a vital new currency; Europe’s e-waste is the vault
Anesthesiologist-led care helps hip-fracture patients get to surgery faster, with fewer complications
Two-dose recombinant shingles vaccine is effective even accounting for prior receipt of live shingles vaccine
Excessive daytime sleepiness may raise risk of cognitive problems after surgery
Flipping the switch on sperm motility offers new hope for male infertility
Twisting sound: Scientists discover a new way to control mechanical vibrations in metamaterial
Drip by drip: The hidden blueprint for stalagmite growth
mRNA therapy restores sperm production and fertility in mice
New way to weaken cancer cells could supercharge prostate cancer treatment
How sound—but not touch—shapes rhythm in the brain
Exploring the therapeutic potential of hypothermia
Research alert: Bioengineering breathes new life into failed cancer treatment
AI, health, and health care today and tomorrow – the JAMA Summit Report on artificial intelligence
Large genetic study links cannabis use to psychiatric, cognitive and physical health
Social media use trajectories and cognitive performance in adolescents
Music for the brain: Study tests the effect of slow-tempo relaxing music to address delirium in critically ill older adults
AI models predict sepsis in children, allow preemptive care
Liraglutide vs semaglutide vs dulaglutide in veterans with type 2 diabetes
Antenatal corticosteroids and infectious diseases throughout childhood
New lab-grown human embryo model produces blood cells
[Press-News.org] Innovative sensing platform unlocks ultrahigh sensitivity in conventional sensorsLan Yang and her team have developed new plug-and-play hardware to dramatically enhance the sensitivity of optical sensors