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[Date] March 14 [Speaker] Professor Markus Raschke Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics [Title] 
"Light Unchained: Virtual Photons Made Real" Thermal radiation - it is so omnipresent that we rarely notice it as something special. Thermal radiation is one of the most universal processes in nature, from the cosmic microwave background left over from the big bang to the visible light from the sun or a light bulb. The investigation of thermal radiation has lead to groundbreaking discoveries throughout the history of physics, such as in thermodynamics by Gustav Kirchhoff or quantum mechanics by Max Planck. Its origin is microscopic charge motion randomly driven by heat energy. However, in addition to the resulting emitted blackbody radiation we detect at a distance from an object, there is also a confined radiation field very near the surface that does not radiate. That thermal surface-confined field, predicted to have a very high energy density and special spectral properties, has long gone unmeasured. I will discuss our quest to perform spectroscopy of this unique optical field by transforming it into detectable radiation using optical nano-antennas on a scanning probe microscope tip. I will discuss how we turned this fundamental discovery into a technique for super-resolution chemical imaging, including its commercialization. I will furthermore give a perspective how this work leads to new methods for thermal management of microelectronic devices, new forms of solar cells which turn waste heat into electricity, and new ways to test physical principles like quantum optical forces.
Saturday Physics Series | Physics
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