QUANTUM ENGINEERING #49: NON LINEAR OPTICS = WIDE BAND GAPPED SEMICONDUCTORS

Linear optics includes most applications of lenses, mirrors, waveplates, diffraction gratings, and many other common optical components and systems.  Cells use some of these things but were limited for a long time because the two domains of life had no way to use this sunlight maximally because primative cells were destroyed by UV light.  This kept life simple.  The development of photosynthetic crystals 30 million years before the Cambrian explosion changed the possibilities of cells.  They began to be able to use non-linear optics to change their interiors.

Nonlinear optical (NLO) crystals serves the goal for generating coherent laser in the ultraviolet (UV) and deep-ultraviolet (DUV) frequency range through second-harmonic generation (SHG).

RBCs and chlorophyll are porphyrins.  They absorb UV-IR light but they are able to split water which has a huge ionization energy of 12.06 eV.  Nature decided to use NLO crystals to create an ocean of freed electrons from water to move in a semiconductive circuit of carbon. Among the different classes of nonlinear materials, prophyrin compounda are a kind of macrocyclic conjugated organic molecule which have an extensive system of delocalized π-electrons, constitute a major organic molecules suitable for NLO device applications.  It seems nature got in this game long ago.

Materials with large birefringence (Δn) are highly needed by fiber-optic isolators, whereas crystals showing strong second-order harmonic generation (SHG) are the key component for all-solid-state laser devices.

Fiber-optic isolators are passive devices that reduce back reflections in optical fibers and backscattering of light to improve the signal to noise ratio.

Nonlinear frequency conversion provides essential tools for cells in generating new colors/frequencies as well as unique quantum states of light.  Nonlinear optical processes in solid-state materials are widely used for generating quantum light, including single photons, entangled-photon pairs, and quadrature-squeezed states.

The monolithic integration of optical elements onto a wideband gapped semiconductor chip provides several advantages. These include suppression of phase fluctuations and other sources of noise and decoherence, the compactness required to build complex quantum photonic networks that would be impossibly large with traditional table-top optics, and an increase in system-level efficiency that ultimately impacts information processing and communication rates.  Cells settled on specific atoms on a hydrated carbon base to build their optical network.

Cells have been using optical communication for 3.7 billion years but the tech industry just began using atomic sources of single and entangled photons for 55 years. The tech industry recently began to use spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC). This is a χ(2)nonlinear process in which a pump photon is destroyed to create two correlated photons traditionally called the signal and idler.

It was not until 1995 that a high-quality, intense source of polarization-entangled photon pairs became available with table-top type-II spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC), which enabled the production of all four EPR-Bell states

DNA/RNA only codes for proteins.  On Earth, we only use 20.  The 20 naturally occurring amino acids have the ability to make 75,000 different proteins because each difference in the amino acid sequence is a different protein. One change of an amino acid from the sequence is considered to be a new protein. It is also accepted if the protein has a repeating unit of one amino acid.

But Nature stepped up its game at the Cambrian explosion when more UV light fell to Earth and the two domains of life merged to form eukaryotes which protected DNA from UV degradation. How did this happen?  I believe the Cambrian explosion is when melanin was created due to the elevated UV reaching the surface and MSH-like genes were innovated from viral parts in the sea and they eventually were added to the interior of early eukaryotic cells.  To this day most of the integument cells have POMC located in them. Because melanin can absorb all frequencies of electromagnetic radiation the excess boost of UV became useful and not detrimental to the new domain of life.  Very rapidly these cells were changed because cells could use more powerful frequencies of light in which to harvest solar power.  That power was used to build complexity.  This changed how cells could communicate.

The essence of what we are talking about here is how can terrestrial sunlight be boosted to take advantage of the chemistry of water and the 20 amino acids coded for in DNA.

In my podcast with Dr. Huberman told me about his fascination with cephalopods and how he uses them in his research.  He seemed quite shocked and I told him our cells are doing the same thing in our brains except we cannot see the light as we do in squid because they have a simpler design.  I asked him if he understood where the light was coming from and what it represented.  He really had no idea.  He has always been fascinated by these animals and how they take light in through their eyes and reflect it on their integument to emit the light to the environment to communicate.  I explained to him what he sees in the tanks every day in his labs is evidence of semiconduction in cells and the cells using second-order electro-optical signals to create birefringence.Birefringence is the optical property of a material having a refractive index that depends on the polarization and propagation direction of light.  Sunlight is unpolarized. Water surface is a typical polarizer in nature.  Water becomes polarized by sunlight.

Water can act like a photo optic cable in a neural network.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S1LNR-ZPaw

Electro-optics are part of non-linear optical communication.

Applying a voltage to a crystal changes its refractive indices and introduces birefringence. This is what a mitochondrion does inside human cells.  We change the voltages on our inner mitochondrial membrane and this changes the colors a mitochondrion can emit.  All those colors stimulate different chromophores inside the structure of a mitochondrion to run the metabolism of oxidative phosphorylation and create water, CO2, and heat to reverse the process of photosynthesis.  The light show cephalopods are putting on is the optical representation of their metabolism in real-time.  It doubles as a communication skill because they can vary their metabolism in the compartments of their cells.  They emit these colors to communicate.  It replaces their ability to speak. Humans have had  560 million years to upgrade and change their communication skills.

I told Dr. Huberman I liked cephalopods because as a neurosurgeon they allow me to look back and see the earliest organizations of a neural network.  Many people do not know that Cephalopods evolved during the Cambrian period (∼530 Ma) very close to when this UV expansion fell to Earth.  This also explains how we went from bacteria and archaea so fast into very complex cephalopod animals.  The earliest melanin chemicals were critical to this rapid evolution.   These animals came from a monoplacophoran-like mollusk in which the conical, external shell was modified into a chambered buoyancy apparatus. During the mid-Palaeozoic (∼416 Ma) cephalopods diverged into nautiloids and the presently dominant coleoids.

NON-LINEAR OPTICS is the base communication system inside of cells. Nonlinear optics allows us to change the color of a light beam, to change its shape in space and time, and to create the shortest events ever made by humans. Nature has been at this game a lot longer than Silicon Valley.  They just began the game in 1961.

Nonlinear optical phenomena are the basis of many components of optical communications systems and optical sensing. NLO(Nonlinear) Crystals, means crystals that can generate nonlinear optical effects from a laser beam or electricity, a magnetic field, a semiconductor LED, or a strain field. As we age we lose the ability to make metabolic water and most of the biomolecules that use NLO are hydrated. As we become hydrated many people find that the addition of plant chemical psychedelics can replace the missing water to amplify NLO functions in cells. There is a famous quote attributed to Tesla about harnessing the magnetic flux of the sun to make it useful.  Blood is one such crystal that allows mitochondria to keep a constant communication network operating between our sun and our colony of mitochondria.  NLO crystal in us does this for living systems.  Below is an NLO system in your standard laser pointer.

Why do cells value wide band gap semiconduction?

WBG semicondutors make VUV light and cells intern use this light to craft UV biophotons for signaling.  

The real answer is they need it to create order out of the chaos in sunlight and to ramp up power generation to create the negative entropy state in a cell.  This creates a dissipative structure in a cell that invites the complexity of biological cycles to begin to form and gain order and be controlled by light emission from within the cell.  This requires atomic-level precision.

Semiconductor quantum wells have very large optical nonlinearity at low levels of excitation and give larger absolute changes in absorption and refractive index. This allows for the massive signal amplification from visible light we see in all living neural networks. Optical nonlinearity from free carrier absorption or free carrier refraction is important at wavelengths of 10 μm or longer.

Optical signal processing in cells for the last 560 million years is the future for human technology when they figure out how to use semiconductors as cells do with a carbon lattice that is hydrated.  When Silicon Valley figures this out this will offer them an optical generation of electrons and holes to control the absorption and refractive index of their semiconductors.  Cells already do this.  They have been perfecting this for 3.8 billion years on Earth.

The nonlinear refractive index of water can be as large as 7 × 10^–10 cm2 W^–1 in the THz frequency range — a million times larger than the value in the visible and near-infrared, according to Russian researchers. The finding confirms earlier theoretical predictions that ionic vibrations in water generate large THz nonlinearities. https://opg.optica.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-27-8-10419&id=408122

What are the most important nonlinear effects of optical fiber communication?

Two important nonlinear effects in optical fibers fall into this category; both of them are related to the vibrational excitation modes of silica. These phenomena, known as stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) and stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS), were among the first nonlinear effects studied in optical fibers.

Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS)

Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) is an inelastic process where a photon of the incident optical signal (pump) stimulates molecular vibration of the material and loses part of its energy. Because of the energy loss, the photon reemits in a lower frequency (Smith, 1972).  This is how we make light weaker than the incident light that is absorbed.  

The interactions in SRS are due to molecular vibrations rather than acoustic ones. Scattered light can appear in both the forward and backward directions when this is used in cells.

STIMULATED BRILLOUIN SCATTERING

Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is similar to SRS in that energy is transferred from an optical pump beam to longer wavelengths through interaction with the glass medium, except that acoustic phonons are involved in the actions, and hence the frequency shift is small, about 11 GHz, and the bandwidth very small, typically 50 MHz. 

The fundamental difference is that, the optical phonons participate in SRS while SBS is through acoustic phonons. As a result of this difference, SBS occurs only in one direction

Phasematching conditions for SBS result in unidirectional gain, i.e., in the backward direction relative to the pump, however, the gain is polarization-independent. 

Because of the narrow bandwidth, the gain efficiency is large (e.g., 6 dB/mW in a typical fiber), and the threshold pump power low (e.g., 1 mW), however, long interaction lengths are required to achieve large gain, the noise figure is poor, and the saturated output power low (e.g., 1 mW). 

Like SRS, SBS can limit the power that can propagate in an optical fiber without unwanted loss or onset of lasing, but is generally only a problem for sources with narrow linewidth, i.e., comparable to the Brillouin gain linewidth.

SUMMARY

Cells use visible light in many queer ways.  Here youre being introduced to how wide band semicondutors are used to create light to signal and use light to create time & sound signals in cells to allow life to happen.  

Light wakes us up but it also has the power to illuminate our mind to create things from the mist of ideas.  Facts alone, cannot illuminate nature's truths, only wisdom can.  Remaining coherent with truth will always illuminate the path of another soul’s journey.

Our life seems to be a series of events and accidents. Yet when most of us look back we do see a pattern to our life. One day in your life really is a microcosm of what your life has been up until that point.  With reflection, you realize everything you can imagine has its own new reality if you begin to live it and give it life.  There is no greater agony than carrying thoughts of an untold story inside you. What light is doing inside of you should astound you.

When you begin to sense your real heart emotions in life, you begin to sense it is never too late to be what you might have been.  This introspection makes you see your heart has always had problems, which your mind could never understand. The difficulty is trying to rebuild yourself with this insight, piece by piece, with no instruction manual, and no idea as to where all the important parts of your life fit.  It's the possibility of changing who you are with your imagination that ultimately, makes life interesting.

Time is valuable in life.  Use it well and you can achieve greatness. Less excuses, more results. Less distraction, more focus. Less me, more we.

CITES

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0030401812014265

https://www.brown.edu/research/labs/mittleman/sites/brown.edu.research.labs.mittleman/files/uploads/lecture35_0.pdf

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10236240290025617?journalCode=gmfw20

https://www.washington.edu/news/2012/01/30/ferroelectric-switching-discovered-for-first-time-in-soft-biological-tissue/