Stellenbosch Laser Student Chapter

Repost from Optica:

"Many people in South Africa rely on fiber optical communication for reliable internet, but few know much about it.

The Wits Optics Student Chapter and the Stellenbosch Laser Student Chapter organized workshops to educate attendees on how submarine and terrestrial fiber communication works and why they're crucial to cloud computing.

The Chapters provided students, industry professionals and academics with knowledge and development opportunities in the field.

Thank you to the Student Chapters that made this possible. Keep up the great work!

Find the full article "The backbone of the Internet, submarine and terrestrial fibre communications in South Africa" in the Blog under our linktr.ee!"

Many people in South Africa rely on fiber optical communication for reliable internet, but few know much about it. The Wits Optics Student Chapter and the Stellenbosch Laser Student Chapter organized workshops to educate attendees on how submarine and terrestrial fiber communication works and why they're crucial to cloud computing. The Chapters provided students, industry professionals and academics with knowledge and development opportunities in the field. Thank you to the Student Chapters that made this possible. Keep up the great work! Find the full article "The backbone of the Internet, submarine and terrestrial fibre communications in South Africa" in the #DiscoverOptica Blog under our linktr.ee!

The Stellenbosch Laser Student Chapter is excited to share our plans to celebrate the International Day of Light for 2023! Join us for a public lecture, demo show and lab tours next week, all highlighting the importance of light in our daily lives.

Monday 15 May: Demo show
13:00-14:00 in lecture hall Alpha (0067) in the Merensky building
The postgrad students will present fun physics experiments.

Tuesday 16 May: “From galaxies to smartwatches: spectroscopy in everyday life.” Public Lecture by Dr Pieter Neethling
17:30 in lecture hall Alpha (0067) in the Merensky building with refreshments served afterwards
RSVP here: https://forms.gle/Keu8sBorNbwhyWmB8

Wednesday 17 May: laser research lab tours
12:30-14:00 starting in Merensky building foyer

Everyone is welcome! We look forward to seeing you at these events.

Last week our chapter teamed up with the Wits Optics Student Chapter to host the Optical Fibre Communications Workshop in Stellenbosch. For two days we learned about subsea networking, how the data is actually put into the fibre, how the terrestrial network allows us to have internet at home, and how this technology allows for Google's Global Infrastructure and the Google Cloud Platform. We were also given a tour of the facilities at the Cable Landing Station in Melkbosstrand. (This is where the SAT-3, SAFE subsea cables, and Google's new Equiano cable connects South Africa's internet to the rest of the world! Amazing when you think about it!)

Attention STEM undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in Optical Fibre Communications research!

On 20 - 21 April 2023, the Stellenbosch Laser Student Chapter is hosting an Optical Fibre Communications workshop in collaboration with the Wits Optics Student Chapter. We have teamed up with Optica, SPIE, the SubOptic Foundation, Google, Infinera and other industry leaders to present this workshop.

Join us on 20 April in Stellenbosch or online to learn how submarine and terrestrial fibre communication works and how these networks make cloud computing possible.

On 21 April, there will also be an excursion to see the Equiano cable at the cable landing station in Melkbosstrand. We will have the opportunity to tour the facilities and learn more about the different submarine and terrestrial fibre networks.

For more information and registration details about the workshop, visit our website https://www.wits.ac.za/eie/events/focus/
Register before 1 April 2023 to attend.

There will also be a workshop in Johannesburg on 18 April 2023 where similar talks will be hosted. If you prefer this location, please see the website.

Thank you to the Geology Optical Microscopy group at Stellenbosch for a fantastic week of learning more about light and its applications! We enjoyed sharing what we do with light with you and taking a tour though your impressive labs. You all rock! 😎

BREAKING NEWS
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.”

Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have each conducted groundbreaking experiments using entangled quantum states, where two particles behave like a single unit even when they are separated. Their results have cleared the way for new technology based upon quantum information.

The ineffable effects of quantum mechanics are starting to find applications. There is now a large field of research that includes quantum computers, quantum networks and secure quantum encrypted communication.

One key factor in this development is how quantum mechanics allows two or more particles to exist in what is called an entangled state. What happens to one of the particles in an entangled pair determines what happens to the other particle, even if they are far apart.

For a long time, the question was whether the correlation was because the particles in an entangled pair contained hidden variables, instructions that tell them which result they should give in an experiment. In the 1960s, John Stewart Bell developed the mathematical inequality that is named after him. This states that if there are hidden variables, the correlation between the results of a large number of measurements will never exceed a certain value. However, quantum mechanics predicts that a certain type of experiment will violate Bell’s inequality, thus resulting in a stronger correlation than would otherwise be possible.

John Clauser developed John Bell’s ideas, leading to a practical experiment. When he took the measurements, they supported quantum mechanics by clearly violating a Bell inequality. This means that quantum mechanics cannot be replaced by a theory that uses hidden variables.

Some loopholes remained after John Clauser’s experiment. Alain Aspect developed the setup, using it in a way that closed an important loophole. He was able to switch the measurement settings after an entangled pair had left its source, so the setting that existed when they were emitted could not affect the result.

Using refined tools and long series of experiments, Anton Zeilinger started to use entangled quantum states. Among other things, his research group has demonstrated a phenomenon called quantum teleportation, which makes it possible to move a quantum state from one particle to one at a distance.

“It has become increasingly clear that a new kind of quantum technology is emerging. We can see that the laureates’ work with entangled states is of great importance, even beyond the fundamental questions about the interpretation of quantum mechanics,” says Anders Irbäck, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.

Learn more
Press release: https://bit.ly/3BLf9gK
Popular information: https://bit.ly/3R3qZYZ
Advanced information: https://bit.ly/3Sa43IS

Finally, the first image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is released! 😁

Sneak a peek at the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the early universe ever taken — all in a day’s work for the Webb telescope. (Literally! Webb was able to capture this image in less than one day, while similar deep field images from Hubble can take multiple weeks.)

This is Webb’s first image released as we begin to : nasa.gov/webbfirstimages/

If you held a grain of sand up to the sky at arm’s length, that tiny speck is the size of Webb’s view in this image. Imagine — galaxies galore within a grain, including light from galaxies that traveled billions of years to us! Why do some of the galaxies in this image appear bent? The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a “gravitational lens,” bending light rays from more distant galaxies behind it, magnifying them.

This image isn’t the farthest back we’ve ever observed. Non-infrared missions like COBE and WMAP saw the universe much closer to the Big Bang (about 380,000 years after), when there was only microwave background radiation, but no stars or galaxies yet. Webb sees a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

The James Webb Space Telescope is an international collaboration between NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the ESA - European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. The Space Telescope Science Institute is the science and mission operations center for Webb.

Tune in tomorrow at 10:30 am ET (14:30 UTC) for the reveal of the rest of Webb’s First Images!

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

We have a new Instagram page! 😎
Go give us a follow to see more cool pictures and be even more convinced of how amazing light can be!

Our postgrad students are all members of these two AMAZING societies #spie and #optica! 🎉🤩 We have them to thank for all the fun things we get to do as a chapter and all the good we do for our community!

Congratulations to our chapter advisor, Prof Erich Rohwer!

Congratulations to Prof Erich Rohwer, laser physicist in the Department of Physics at Stellenbosch University, for being elected as one of the 2021 Fellow Members of OPTICA for his and to in . OPTICA is the leading international organization for scientists, engineers and industry interested in the science of light. More at http://www.sun.ac.za/english/Lists/news/DispForm.aspx?ID=8893
CSIR African Laser Centre AFRICAN LASER CENTRE STUDENT CHAPTER (ALC-SC) CSIR National Laser Centre - PULSE National Research Foundation Department of Science and Innovation

A very exciting delivery came last week... Our new Optica chapter flag! Thank you Optica! 😃