| HOME >> BIOLOGY >> TECHNOLOGY |
At its heart, the researchers' change in strategy from using magnetic inductance to kinetic inductance stems from a simple shift in ideas.
"Magnetic inductance represents the tendency of the electromagnetic world to resist change according to Faraday's law," explains Ham. "Kinetic inductance, on the other hand, represents the reluctance to change in the mechanical world, according to Newton's law."
"When electrons are confined perfectly into two dimensions, kinetic inductance becomes much larger than magnetic inductance, and it is this very large two-dimensional kinetic inductance that is responsible for the very strong negative refraction we achieve," explains lead author Hosang Yoon, a graduate student at SEAS. "The dimensionality profoundly affects the condensed-matter electron behaviors, and one of those is the kinetic inductance."
To obtain the large kinetic inductance, Ham and Yoon's work employs a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG), which forms at the interface of two semiconductors, gallium arsenide and aluminum gallium arsenide. The very "clean" 2DEG sample used in this work was fabricated by coauthor Vladimir Umansky, of the Weizmann Institute.
Ham's team effectively sliced a sheet of 2DEG into an array of strips and used gigahertz-frequency electromagnetic waves (microwaves) to accelerate electrons in the leftmost few strips. The resulting movements of electrons in these strips were "felt" by the neighboring strips to the right, where electrons are consequently accelerated.
In this way, the proof-of-concept device propagates an effective wave to the right, in a direction perpendicular to the strips, each of which acts as a kinetic inductor due to the electrons' acceleration therein. This effective wave proved to exhibit what the researchers call a "staggering" degree of negative refraction.
The primary advantages of the n
'/>"/>
| Contact: Caroline Perry cperry@seas.harvard.edu 617-496-1351 Harvard University Source:Eurekalert |