If you want the best night vision available on the market, start saving, as it costs $65,000. That gets you the Ground Panoramic Night Vision Goggle offered by L3 Warrior Systems, which were used in the Osama Bin Laden raid back in 2011. They are heavy, require a lot of power to function, and only offer a 97 degree field of view. However, a revolution looks set to happen, which could see all of us enjoying cheap night vision by wearing the equivalent of a pair of sunglasses.
That revolution comes courtesy of a research team at the Australian National University (ANU). According to Defense One, the team managed to harness a process called second-harmonic generation thanks to the creation of nanocrystal nanoantennas "500 times smaller than a human hair," which change the intensity, structure, and color of light. As the nanoantennas are so small, the goal is to manufacture them as a film that is then applied to the lenses of a pair of glasses.
Manufacturing will be very similar to how solar cells are made, and the semiconductor material required (aluminum gallium arsenide) is already commonly found in smartphones.
Second-harmonic generation is also known as "frequency doubling." Wikipedia explains how the process allows the generation of "new photons with twice the energy, and therefore twice the frequency and half the wavelength of the initial photons."
The ANU used this frequency doubling to convert "photons from infrared to visible light directly." In order to do this requires combining the infrared light photons with new photons generated by a laser. Unlike today's night vision goggles, the laser requires much less power, which could be provided by a battery pack attached to the glasses (similar to how Google Glass was powered, for example).
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For the research to continue the ANU team requires funding. They have submitted a proposal to DARPA, but no decision has been taken yet. However, if these nanoantennas really do deliver the equivalent or better night vision for a fraction of the price of the Ground Panoramic goggles, funding seems assured.
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