According to engineers, this could lead to a breakthrough in the field of studying micro-events that appear and disappear too quickly for even today’s most expensive scientific sensors.

Detail

SCARF successfully captures ultrafast events such as absorption in a semiconductor and demagnetization of a metal alloy. The research could open new horizons in various fields, such as shock wave mechanics or the development of more effective drugs.

The research group was led by Professor Jinyang Liang of Canada’s National Institute of Scientific Research (INRS), a world-renowned pioneer in the field of ultra-high-speed photography. He relied on his own findings, made in a separate study six years ago.

Professor Liang and his team presented a new perspective on high-speed cameras. Often these systems use a sequential approach: taking frames one at a time and stitching them together to observe objects in motion. However, this approach has limitations. “For example, phenomena such as femtosecond laser ablation, the interaction of shock waves with living cells, and optical chaos cannot be studied in this way.”– says Liang.

SCARF camera / Institute of Photography national de la recherche scientifique

The new technology turns the traditional logic of high-speed cameras upside down.

“SCARF overcomes these challenges. The image acquisition method enables ultra-fast static coded aperture distribution without disrupting the ultra-fast phenomenon. This enables full-sequence coding rates of up to 156.3 THz for individual pixels in a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera .” “These results can be achieved in a single shot with adjustable frame rate and spatial scale in both reflection and transmission modes.”– commented Julie Robert from the National Institute for Scientific Research in Canada.

In very simple terms, this means that the camera uses a computational imaging method to capture spatial information by allowing light to hit its sensor at slightly different times. Not having to process spatial data at this point is one of the things that allows the camera to capture these extremely fast laser pulses. At a rate of up to 156.3 trillion per second, it effectively saves them for later. The raw image data can then be processed by a computer algorithm that decodes the time interval and turns each of the trillions of frames into a complete image.

Specifically, this was done “using off-the-shelf and passive optical components,” as described in the article. The team describes SCARF as low-cost, low-power, and high-quality measurements compared to existing methods.

Although SCARF is more research-focused than consumer-focused, the team is working with two companies, Axis Photonique and Few-Cycle, to develop commercial versions, possibly for colleagues at other universities or research institutions.