Gravitational lens effect: an observational test

The large proper motion of the nearby star 40 Eridani-A will pass a distant star in 1988. It should be possible to observe the gravitational lens effect of this eclipse by existing photoelectric methods.     

Active optics, adaptive optics, and laser guide stars

Optical astronomy is crucial to our understanding of the universe, but the capabilities of ground-based telescopes are severely limited by the effects of telescope errors and of the atmosphere on the passage of light. Recently, it has become possible to construct inbuilt corrective devices that can compensate for both types of degradations as observations are conducted. For full use of the newly emerged class of 8-meter telescopes, such active corrective capabilities, known as active and adaptive optics, are essential. Some physical limitations in the adaptive optics field can be overcome by artificially created reference stars, called laser guide stars. These new technologies have lately been applied with success to some medium and very large telescopes.     

Single-cycle nonlinear optics

Nonlinear optics plays a central role in the advancement of optical science and laser-based technologies. We report on the confinement of the nonlinear interaction of light with matter to a single wave cycle and demonstrate its utility for time-resolved and strong-field science. The electric field of 3.3-femtosecond, 0.72-micron laser pulses with a controlled and measured waveform ionizes atoms near the crests of the central wave cycle, with ionization being virtually switched off outside this interval. Isolated sub-100-attosecond pulses of extreme ultraviolet light (photon energy approximately 80 electron volts), containing approximately 0.5 nanojoule of energy, emerge from the interaction with a conversion efficiency of approximately 10(-6). These tools enable the study of the precision control of electron motion with light fields and electron-electron interactions with a resolution approaching the atomic unit of time ( approximately 24 attoseconds).     

Adaptive optics revisited

From the earliest days and nights of telescopic astronomy, atmospheric turbulence has been a serious detriment to optical performance. The new technology of adaptive optics can overcome this problem by compensating for the wavefront distortion that results from turbulence. The result will be large gains in resolving power and limiting magnitude, closely approaching the theoretical limit. In other words, telescopic images will be very significantly sharpened. Rapid and accelerating progress is being made today by several groups. Adaptive optics, together with the closely related technology of active optics, seems certain to be utilized in large astronomical telescopes of the future. This may entail significant changes in telescope design.     

Gravitational mechanism for sea-floor spreading

The gravitational attraction of the continents produces a force field at the surface of the earth, similar in geometry to lithospheric displacements deduced from studies of earthquake focal mechanisms.     

Transformation optics using graphene

Metamaterials and transformation optics play substantial roles in various branches of optical science and engineering by providing schemes to tailor electromagnetic fields into desired spatial patterns. We report a theoretical study showing that by designing and manipulating spatially inhomogeneous, nonuniform conductivity patterns across a flake of graphene, one can have this material as a one-atom-thick platform for infrared metamaterials and transformation optical devices. Varying the graphene chemical potential by using static electric field yields a way to tune the graphene conductivity in the terahertz and infrared frequencies. Such degree of freedom provides the prospect of having different "patches" with different conductivities on a single flake of graphene. Numerous photonic functions and metamaterial concepts can be expected to follow from such a platform.     

Determination of the Earth's Gravitational Field

Brenner et al. have pointed out that spurious variations may be introduced into computation of satellite orbits by a combination of the use of osculating elements and a maldistribution of the observations. They suggest that this circumstance is the source of the eccentricity variations in the Vanguard I orbit which have been attributed to the third zonal harmonic. This criticism is based on a misunderstanding of the Vanguard orbit and tracking programs. The source materials for our study of the third zonal harmonic were not osculating elements, and the observations were in fact uniformly distributed around the Vanguard I orbit.