Month: June 2016

Embryonic Development and Quantum Optics

Harvey Prize winners for 2015: Prof. Marc Kirschner and Prof. Immanuel Bloch

At a festive ceremony on June 5, 2016, the Technion awarded the Harvey Prize for 2015 to Prof. Marc Kirschner of Harvard University (USA) and Prof. Immanuel Bloch of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (Germany). The $75,000 prize, named after Leo Harvey (1887-1973), was established in 1972 as a bridge of goodwill between Israel and the nations of the world. It is awarded annually to men and women who have made a significant contribution to humanity. Around 17% of the prizewinners have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.

“Timing is everything”

Prof. Marc Kirschner, of the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, will receive the prize for his groundbreaking and pioneering discoveries and contributions to three fundamental areas of modern biology: embryology, cell organization and the cell cycle.

Prof. Kirschner, born in 1945, earned his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley (1971) and did his postdoctoral research at Berkeley and the University of Oxford. In 1972 he received an academic appointment at Princeton University, and then spent 15 years at the University of California, San Francisco, after which he joined Harvard Medical School, where he founded the Department of Systems Biology.

On his website, Prof. Kirschner wrote: “In the development of an organism, as in the theater, timing is everything. Imagine if, one night, the actors in a play were to miss every single cue, delivering each line perfectly, but always too early or too late. The evening would be a disaster. The same is true in embryonic development. Starting at the moment when sperm and egg meet, cells in the embryo send signals to each other to coordinate the growth of organs, limbs, and tissues. Not only do the signals have to be correct, they also must be perfectly timed. Otherwise, disasters like cancer can result.”

Using tools from the world of biochemistry and molecular and cellular biology, Prof. Kirschner analyzes the processes that control cells and tissues, and has made a substantial contribution to our understanding of the process of embryonic development: the characteristics of the cytoskeleton, controlling the cell’s life cycle and the embryonic development of vertebrates.

Between Light and Matter

Prof. Immanuel Bloch of the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Germany, will receive the Harvey Prize for fundamental contributions in the field of light and matter interactions in quantum many-body systems. In particular, he is recognized  for his pioneering experiments realizing quantum simulators using cold atoms trapped in crystals of light, thereby establishing a new research field at the interface of condensed matter, atomic physics, and quantum optics.

Prof. Bloch, born in 1972, earned his doctorate in physics from Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich (2000) and has worked at some of Germany’s leading institutions: Ludwig Maximilian University, the Johannes Gutenberg University, and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics.

Recently, Prof. Bloch experimentally demonstrated the “Zak Phase” in an array of cold atoms. The Zak Phase is named after Prof. Emeritus Joshua Zak of the Technion Faculty of Physics. Prof. Zak, who recently received the prestigious Wigner Medal, published an article in the journal Physical Review Letters in 1989, explaining the geometric phase of electrons in solid matter. Twenty-four years later, in 2013, Prof. Bloch managed to measure the phase in a lattice of cold atoms artificially formed with light.

Over the years, the Harvey Prize has been awarded to scientists from the US, Britain, Russia, Sweden, France and Israel. Prizewinners include Nobel laureate Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, who received the Harvey Prize for his efforts to reduce regional tension; Prof. Bert Sakmann (1992 Nobel Prize in Medicine); Prof. Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1992 Nobel Prize in Physics); Prof. Edward Teller for his discoveries in solid state, atomic and nuclear physics; Prof. William J. Kolff for the invention of the artificial kidney; and Prof. Shuji Nakamura, 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics, for developing the blue LED.

The research group of Technion Prof. Erez Hasman has developed technology for compressing dozens of lenses on a nanometric surface. The study, published in Science magazine, paves the way for creating a completely new type of optical elements with potential applications in medicine, food, communications and other fields.

Science magazine reports on new technology developed by the research group of Prof. Erez Hasman from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Technion. This technology enables the compression of dozens of lenses on a nanometric surface. Possible applications: development and testing of food ingredients and pharmaceuticals, optical interconnect for communication and computing by sending multiple beams of light, splitting the light signals transmitted through optical fiber, connecting several beams of light, multifocal glasses with an unprecedented level of accuracy, and devices for quantum computing.

“The source of our inspiration,” explains Prof. Hasman, “is ordinary radar, based on the deployment of antennas that transmit and receive various wave-fronts. The challenge in the transition from radio wave radar to optical radar is related to the fact that the latter operates at much shorter wavelengths – around 0.5 micron – and the length of the antenna must be smaller than the wavelength.”

The study was conducted by the nano-optics research group, headed by Prof. Hasman, whose members are graduate students Elhanan Maguid, Igor Yulevich, Dekel Veksler and researcher Dr. Vladimir Kleiner, in collaboration with Prof. Mark Brongersma of Stanford University. The group showed that by spatial mixing of various antennas, many wave-fronts can be produced from a shared optical aperture. “The approach that we developed is expected to bring about a functionality revolution in optics,” explains Prof. Hasman. “It is based on a combination the shared-aperture concept and metasurfaces, which I developed back in 2001. This combination paves way for the implementation of multi-functional elements, i.e. elements that are able to perform several tasks simultaneously and, in effect, new types of optical elements.”

Metasurfaces are thin optical elements, approximately one hundredth of the thickness of a hair shaft, covered with miniature antennas (nano-antennas). The shape, location and orientation of the antenna determine the properties of the tiny optical elements, and therefore precise control of the placement of the antennas is essential for the performance of the device. The group has applied techniques for creating nano-antenna arrays in order to obtain special multiple wave-fronts, such as vortex beams carrying orbital angular momentum. This achievement has been utilized for the simultaneous measurement of spectrum characteristics and polarization state of light, enabling integrated on-chip spectro–polarimetric analysis.

The article in Science, which was selected for early publication by the editors, presents various methods for implementing multi-functionality in metasurfaces. The unique arrangement of the nano-antennas allows researchers to focus light rays and deflect them in desired directions while controlling the degree of spin of photon. The spin, i.e. the internal angular momentum, is a property of the particle of light (photon) describing the direction of the photon rotation.

The researchers took advantage of these properties and developed an element which is able to measure the wavelength and polarization of light simultaneously, as a single measurement. This is actually a spectro-polarimeter of around 50 microns in size, allowing the integration of advanced small diagnostics systems in medicine and other fields. In the article, the researchers presented the characterization and differentiation between the two types of glucose – left (L) and right (D). Morphologically, the two types of glucose are enantiomeric, i.e. an exact mirror image of each other – like a pair of hands. This property is called chirality.

Since glucose changes the polarization of light, the researchers measured properties of the light scattered by the glucose solution using the metasurfaces that they developed, and were able to distinguish between the two types of glucose.

This distinction between the two types of glucose is important because mammals have enzymes that break down D-glucose but not L-glucose, and therefore only the D enantiomer is biologically active. Moreover, since most biological molecules are chiral, enantiomeric distinction has widespread implications for the pharmaceutical and food industries. Thalidomide, for example – the anti-nausea drug that caused thousands of birth defects in the 1950s – was based on a chiral molecule. One of its enantiomers does indeed relieve morning sickness in pregnant women, but the other harms fetal development.

Prof. Hasman heads the Micro and Nanooptics Laboratory at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute at the Technion. He said, “Apart from the know-how that we have accumulated here in many years of work, Technion has a highly advanced world-class infrastructure, enabling us to develop and produce very pioneering nanotechnology. This is all going on at the Sara & Moshe Zisapel Nanoelectronics Center.” He proudly notes Israel’s position on the global optics map. “Israel, and not only the Technion, is definitely an optics empire. We have some of the world’s leading research groups as well as a highly impressive industry.”

Prof. Hasman earned his doctorate at the Weizmann Institute of Science and then spent a decade spearheading developments in the civilian and defense industries. In 1998, in view of the shortage of optical engineers, the Technion offered him the opportunity to establish the Optical Engineering track at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering – and he accepted the offer. He says, “It is now clear that an engineering background, extensive as it may be, is not complete without a thorough scientific background, and this is the gap that we are filling here: training engineers with a comprehensive understanding of optical science. Today, this track provides industry with many alumni who possess in-depth knowledge in optics and trains many doctoral students, and there are even professors in academia who studied here in the Optical Engineering track.”

For the article click here

For a video click here

In the video: Parallel optical nano-engines based on photonic radar. Optical engines are designed for the manipulation of DNA, photonic nano – switches, photonic nano- valves, etc.