Colour-mixing light device could lead to optical computing

The breakthrough by a team of theoretical and applied physicists and engineers at Rice’s Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) is described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Rice’s team used the method to create an optical device in which incoming light could be directly controlled with light through a process called four-wave mixing.

Four-wave mixing has been widely studied, but Rice’s disc-patterning method is said to be the first that can produce materials that are tailored to perform four-wave mixing with a range of coloured inputs and outputs.

‘Versatility is one of the advantages of this process,’ said study co-author Naomi Halas, director of LANP and Rice’s Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a professor of biomedical engineering, chemistry, physics and astronomy. ‘It allows us to mix colours in a very general way. That means not only can we send in beams of two different colours and get out a third colour, but we can fine-tune the arrangements to create devices that are tailored to accept or produce a broad spectrum of colours.’