Researchers at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France have demonstrated that silicon lenses can be used to focus gamma-rays just like visible light, undermining the decades-old belief that gamma radiation cannot be manipulated optically.
Professor Dieter Habs of Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching hopes that the new discovery could lead to an increase in the characterization of materials and developments in the medical field.
“Gamma-rays are ten to a thousand times more energetic than X-rays and can penetrate very dense materials. One could even perform remote imaging of individual atoms – an important advantage for the detection of radioactive materials,” he said.
