Scientists Trapped Light Inside a Metamaterial and Made It 10x More Magnetic

[Judi Lynn]

This could open doors to technologies we thought were impossible.

Headshot of Darren OrfBY DARREN ORFPUBLISHED: AUG 18, 2023



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Finding new ways to control light and magnetism will enable new technologies that we never thought possible.

Scientists from the City College of New York (CCNY) developed a way to effectively trap light inside a metamaterial, and in turn make the light 10 times more magnetic.

This breakthrough could lead to the creation of technologies like magnetic lasers that can leverage strong magneto-optical interactions.


Modern life is made possible by electromagnetism. Any piece of technology you use today uses some electromagnetic property discovered by physics over the course of centuries. Finding new ways to manipulate light—which is part of the electromagnetic spectrum—and magnetism will enable the creation of technologies (especially in the quantum realm) that we can’t yet imagine.

To explore new ways to control this fundamental force of nature, scientists from the City College of New York (CCNY) trapped light inside a magnetic metamaterial and made the material itself 10 times more magnetic in the process. The results of the study were published this week in the journal Nature.

The material used was a semiconductor layered with chromium, sulfur, and bromine, and is in a class known as magnetic van der Waals materials (named after Dutch theoretical physicist Johannes Diderik van der Waals). These materials contain attributes not commonly found in naturally occurring materials, and scientists are only beginning to understand their possible applications.

More:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a44843071/scientists-trapped-light-inside-metamaterial-magnetic/