Scientists from the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne have achieved this with a camera whose shutter speed is one billionth of a second
CUSP: Can you see light waves traveling?Advancement can be useful in the field of chemistry and for seeing around obstaclesarxiv.org
Kazuhiro Morimoto, Ming-Lo Wu, Andrei Ardelean and Edoardo Charbon are four scientists from the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne, in Switzerland. They are the architects of having managed to capture on video a beam of light bouncing between two mirrors .To do this, they have used an ultra-fast camera, in addition to projecting a type of visible light thanks to a laser pulse that disperses particles in the air that can be captured. The camera used has a shutter speed of around one billionth of a second to take pictures and videos of a laser beam in three-dimensional space.
knowing exactly the time it took for the camera pulse, as well as its trajectory, made it easier for scientists to create a machine learning algorithm that reconstructs the entire path of light .
According to Marty Baylor, from Carleton College in Minnesota, this advance could be useful in the field of chemistry , as it will allow us to see light interacting with a molecule in real time.
Likewise, one of the responsible scientists, Edoardo Charbo, points out that a similar system would have application to be able to see around obstacles : “If he bounced a laser pulse off a wall, then off a darkened object in a corner and backed off the wall again Before capturing it, the algorithm could potentially reconstruct an image ”.
More information on this incredible project, called Superluminal Motion-Assisted 4-Dimensional Light-in-Flight Imaging , can be found at Cornell University’s arxiv.org . Where the entire process developed is specified in a much more technical and profuse way. Also included are videos that capture a beam of light bouncing between mirrors.
