MOSCOW, January 31 (Sputnik) — European and American physicists have managed to create a Mobius strip – a surface that has only one side and only one boundary component — made out of light.
While it is simple to make a Mobius strip using a piece of paper and a little glue, scientists were only able to copy the concept on a molecular level in 2010 by using DNA helix as a template.
An international team of physicists led by Robert W. Boyd, a professor of optics and physics at the University of Rochester, turned a tightly focused laser beam into a Mobius strip with the help of a device called q-plate – essentially a liquid crystal lens that could manipulate the dimensional polarization of light.
According to Boyd, ‘light strips’ could have a wide range of scientific and practical applications, ranging from manufacturing sophisticated lenses, optic devices and exotic metamaterials.
