Spotlight on Graduate Scientific Photography

An Optics and Photonics News honorable mention for Technion graduate’s photographed experiment

Dr. Shai Maayani, a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who completed all three of his degrees at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, has just received honorable mention in the 2018 photography competition of the Optical Society of America (OSA).

Three spheres trapped in white light
Calculated intensity as particles are added reveals that each of the particles gives rise to a new power maximum near the place where the next particle settles. [Honorable mention 2018 After Image photo contest.]—Shai Maayani, MIT

All eight winners captured scientific images look like magnificent geometric works of art. Dr. Maayani’s award-winning entry shows three jewel-like spheres trapped in white light. He called the experiment he photographed “calculated intensity, as particles are added, reveals that each of the particles gives rise to a new power maximum near the place where the next particle settles.”

Her photograph appears in the special issue of the association Optics and Photonics News (OPN) journal devoted to “Optics in 2018.” He described the experiment in which three balls are trapped in a white beam of light that makes them float in the air. The balls break the light that captures them just like raindrops that break the white light to all the colors of the rainbow.

In addition, in the same issue of OPN, Dr. Maayani and Rafi Dahan conducted research on optical isolators (diodes) as one of the 30 most important optics experiments of the year. The experiment was reported in the prestigious journal Nature.

These studies were conducted in the laboratory of Prof. Tal Carmon in the Technion’s Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. It was the second consecutive year that the work of Dr. Maayani, Prof. Carmon and their partners had been selected by the OSA as one of the most important experiments. Shai is currently a postdoc scholar at MIT, where he is developing novel fiber-optics under the direction of Technion graduate Prof. Yoel Fink

Visit www.osa-opn.org/home/gallery/photo_contests/2018 for a gallery of all the submissions to this year After Image photo contest.