30 November 2025 to 5 December 2025
Building 40, Room 153
Australia/Sydney timezone
AIP Summer Meeting 2025 - University of Wollongong

Response of Sea Urchins to Light Polarisation

3 Dec 2025, 11:30
15m
Building 67 (Room 101)

Building 67

Room 101

Contributed Oral Industrial Applied Physics Industrial Applied Physics

Speaker

Yun Peng Li (University of Sydney)

Description

The usefulness and importance of light polarisation have skyrocketed in recent times with applications found
in biomedicine, imaging, characterisation of biological and chemical systems, and astrophysics just to name a
few. Ecologically, more and more examples of flora and fauna are found to utilise the polarisation of light for
growth, navigation, and communication, increasing the need for polarisation characterisation. Current polari-
metric photodetectors for visible light generally use a polarising filter, which reduces their overall sensitivity and
effectiveness. This motivates the search for better alternatives, both for linear and circular polarisations. In this
work, we explore the possibility of polarisation detection via biomimicry by investigating the linear and circular
polarisation sensitivity of the sea urchin species Paracentrotus lividus, Echinus esculentus, and Psammechinus
miliaris through their phototactic responses under illumination of light. It was discovered that P. miliaris has
the ability to differentiate between horizontally and vertically polarised halogen light and additionally P. lividus
potentially has the ability to differentiate circularly polarised light. These findings could lead to a novel mech-
anism of polarisation detection in the visible domain and a step toward a new technology or its determination.
Such a detector would be simpler compared to current alternatives, making it cheaper and easier to produce, and
also allow for direct detection of polarised light in the visible wavelengths.

Author

Yun Peng Li (University of Sydney)

Co-authors

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