The butterfly of the year 2020 is …
Category: Optics & Biophotonics
Dirty Dancing in the Dark – facilitated by a nanostructure in a nocturnal moth?
In a project led by Jennifer Kelley (UWA) and Bodo Wilts (Fribourg), we’ve looked at a funky iridescence effect in a nocturnal moth, where a nanostructure facilitates an angle-dependent flicker that might (but we don’t know) be used by the insects for communication. What makes it somewhat special is the fact that the animal is nocturnal and that the effect happens on a part of the wing that is brown. Read more
Gyroid chirality presentation at APS March Meeting
I am grateful to Greg Grason for organising a very interesting “Chirality in Polymers and Soft Matter” focus session at the APS March Meeting 2019. For those interested in my talk slides, I’ve uploaded them at the APS site, click here.
Surprisingly good approximation of single gyroid made from overlapping equal-handed helices
Here’s a neat little construction of the single gyroid as the union of perpendicular overlapping helices. All are equal-handed, clearly emphasizing the chiral nature of the single gyroid. Read more
Brezels, Bragg & Butterflies: Topological Photonics behind novel broad-band chiro-optical material
Since the award of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics for “theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter”, topological effects are all the hype in condensed matter physics. In a new paper “Bragg-mirror-like circular dichroism in bio-inspired quadruple-gyroid 4srs nanostructures“, just published by the Nature Group journal Light: Science & Applications, we describe the experimental realisation of a photonic material that owes its amazing optical properties to a topological effect.