Dual Frequency Comb Created On A Single Processor Employing A Single Laser

In a fresh paper posted this week in Science Advances, scientists below the guidance of Alexander Gaeta and Michal Lipson (Columbia Engineering Professors for Applied Mathematics and Applied Physics) have reduced dual-frequency combs by placing 2 generators of frequency comb on a one millimeter-sized processor. “This is the initial time a dual comb has been made on a solitary processor employing a sole laser,” claims Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering, Lipson, to the media in an interview.

A frequency comb is a particular type of light beam with a lot of various frequencies, or “colors,” all separated from each other in a very accurate manner. When this multi-color light is transported via a chemical sample, some colors are soaked up by the molecules of the sample. By seeing at which colors have been soaked up, one can exclusively recognize the molecules in the sample with high accuracy. This method, dubbed as frequency-comb spectroscopy, allows fingerprinting of molecular and can be employed to perceive toxic chemicals in industrial regions, to monitor the environment or to apply occupational security controls.

“Dual-comb spectroscopy is this method placed on steroids,” claims lead author of the paper and former student in Lipson’s team (currently Stanford’s postdoctoral scholar), Avik Dutt, to the media in an interview. “By combining 2 frequency combs in preference to a single comb, we can elevate the pace at which calculations are carried out by 1000x or more.”

The study also showed the broadest span of the frequency for any dual comb, that is, the dissimilarity among the colors on the high- and low-frequency end is the biggest. This span allows a bigger diversity of chemicals to be sensed with the similar machine, and also makes it simpler to exclusively verify the molecules—the wider the variety of colors in the comb, the wider the variety of molecules that can look at the colors.