Image: Photonik Austria
“Let’s get optical” was the worldwide theme on the 16th of May – the UNESCO International Day of Light. In Austria the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology took this opportunity to showcase not only its achievements in research projects, but also the little yet astonishing things everyone can do with light.
Light bears the potential to enrich our daily lives. It’s not just the sun that triggers emotions, it’s much more: the Internet, medicine, displays, industrial manufacturing, sensors or supercomputers – in all these applications technology based on light is playing a critical and meanwhile indispensable role. Reason enough for the European Commission to declare photonics, the technology that investigates the beneficial use of light, as one of the key enabling technologies of the 21st century – and reason enough to celebrate its early outcomes right now. In Austria this celebration was hosted by the Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT) and organized through the technology platform Photonics Austria.
Photonics is the technology for generating and harnessing light, whose quantum unit is the photon. These important aspects were also covered by the public talks of two AIT researchers: Photonics expert Bernhard Schrenk gave insight on photonic integrated circuits, in which electrons are replaced by photons to unleash a new level of performance, while quantum expert Hannes Hübel shed some light on the amazing possibilities that arise by exploiting the nature of single photons, such as ghost imaging.
These talks were complemented by further insightful presentations on a wide range of photonic applications and through an exhibition of project demonstrators, including one of AIT’s entangled photon sources and the world’s first transistor-outline coherent telecom transceiver.
On top of this, a set of public experiments was set up by the AIT experts. The visitors had the possibility to inspect what is floating inside water through use of a simple laser microscope or to accurately measure their hair diameter with micrometer precision. These hands-on experiments were crowned by a water well whose jet was guiding classical music that has been modulated on a light beam injected in this rather unconventional transmission medium.
The event, which attracted great interest by the public, was serving as platform to discuss with the Austrian photonics expert and was concluded with an impressive light show featuring Ralph Light on his laser harp. Stay tuned and mark next year’s celebration in your calendar – on the 16th of May, 2019.
Further information: www.ait.ac.at/quantum