Converting light from one wavelength (or "color") to a shorter wavelength, a process needed for efficient communication and advanced manufacturing, is typically inefficient. To tackle that inefficiency, a team built a specialized, layered structure with tiny metallic cavities that improves the light conversion efficiency by orders of magnitude. The cavities can also alter other characteristics (direction and polarization) of the outgoing light beam.
The new concept explained in the studies can open doors for advanced lasers for optical communications and efficient manufacturing. It can also support efforts to miniaturize optical components for high-speed computing, telecommunications, cameras, and quantum computing that will solve computational problems currently intractable by today's supercomputers.
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