Speaker Series: Eric Mazur... Wrapping light around a hair

Can light be guided by a fiber whose diameter is much smaller than the wavelength of the light? Can we mold the flow of light on the micrometer scale so it wraps, say, around a hair? Until recently the answer to these questions was "no." We developed a technique for drawing long, freestanding silica wires with diameters down to 50 nm that have a surface smoothness at the atomic level and a high uniformity of diameter.