Our new paper in Nature describes how quantum fluctuations of electromagnetic fields give rise to a Casimir torque. This manuscript describes the first experimental observation of this phenomenon. There is an accompanying News & Views article as well as various reports in the media (e.g. Nature Podcast, PhysicsWorld, Phys.Org, Science Daily, UMD, etc.).

For the Dec 19th Nature Podcast: Quantum physics adds a twist and festive fun, reports interview Prof. Munday about their recent paper on the first measurement of the Casimir torque.

Prof. Munday gives an invited presentation at OSA’s Latin America Optics & Photonics Conference. Thanks to Gustavo and Alexandre for the invitation!

Associate Professor Jeremy Munday was selected by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to receive a Young Faculty Award for his research project entitled “Engineering the Quantum Vacuum.” This award will lead to an exciting expansion of the groups work on vacuum fluctuation phenomena. A press release can be found here.

Associate Professor Jeremy Munday was selected by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to receive a Young Faculty Award for his research project entitled “Engineering the Quantum Vacuum.” This award will lead to an exciting expansion of the groups work on vacuum fluctuation phenomena. A press release can be found here.

Read Joe Garrett’s latest work using harmonic mixing to tune the resolution of KPFM in-situ at ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.

Joe, Tarun, and Kevin’s latest paper has been published in Review of Scientific Instruments, and has been highlighted in AIP’s SciLight: Novel apparatus simultaneously and fully characterizes nanoscale reactions.

Congratulations to David!

Thanks to Lisa and Tristan for helping setup a lab tour for the National Society of Black Engineers National Leadership Conference at UMD this week and to Emily Irwin for setting it up.

From solar cells for power generation to microprocessors and laser pointers, semiconductor materials are a key ingredient in modern technology. However, the color of light that gets absorbed or emitted by these materials is usually fixed, placing limitations on their functionality. Now researchers in the group of Prof. Jeremy Munday, in collaboration with the groups of Prof. Marina Leite and Prof. Edo Waks, have found a way to circumvent this limitation through the use of controlled photon recycling, i.e.the process by which emitted photons are redirected back into the semiconductor to affect its electrical response. Using this effect, the authors demonstrate tunable diodes, improved solar cells, and actively controlled, gate-free current modulators. This work, entitled “Active control of photon recycling for tunable optoelectronic materials”, is featured as the cover article of Advance Optical Materials for April 5, 2018. A link to the ECE news story can be found here.

Graduate student Lisa Krayer’s paper on Near-IR Imaging Based on Hot Carrier Generation in Nanometer-Scale Optical Coatings is on the cover of the February issue of ACS Photonics. Congratulations, Lisa!

Our latest work revealing the Casimir force between two spheres is published in Physical Review Letters and is featured in APS’s Physic Synopsis and at UMD in ECE, Engineering, and Physics. Congratulations to first author Joe Garrett!

An article has been published in Physics World describing our upcoming paper on the Casimir force between two spheres.

Prof. Munday gives a talk about the latest hot carrier work from the Munday lab at the 39th PIERS in Singapore. Thanks to Nanyang Technological University (NTU) for hosting the conference and Amit Agrawal and Cheng Zhang for the invitation!

Quantum fluctuations of electromagnetic waves can result in a torque between two optically anisotropic materials. In David’s recent paper (entitled “Casimir-Lifshitz Torque Enhancement by Retardation and Intervening Dielectrics”), we show that a full calculation of this phenomenon taking into account the finite speed of light shows that the torque is stronger than expected and can be increased further with a dielectric spacer layer between the objects. This paper can be found in Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 183001 (2017), and a press release can be found here.