Browse Physics

Design ideas for making new optical devices borrow from supersymmetry, a candidate theory in particle physics.

Plasmonic nanostructures can be used to generate optical vortices with varying amounts of angular momentum.

Thousands of coupled lasers offer a new way to study how frustrated systems behave.

Experiments demonstrate the possibility of engineering stable, nanometer-scale magnetic structures in thin magnetic films by firing laser pulses at them.

Femtosecond laser spectroscopy can identify otherwise inaccessible precursors in photoinduced chemical reactions.

Laser light scattered from a single atom undergoes large optical phase shifts that may be useful in imaging and quantum information transmission.

The use of optical tweezers in a high-pressure experiment allows a more direct measurement of water viscosity in extreme conditions.

By measuring the inertial forces that act on a laser system, researchers have been able to increase the stability of frequency emission by an order of magnitude over previous methods.

Microparticles suspended in an optical cavity may be a new way to detect gravity waves.

In a crystal with an undulating lattice deformation, geometric phase-shift effects allow better control of x-ray propagation.

Metamaterials offer a way to enhance light-induced forces in waveguide-based optomechanical devices.

In laser metrology, adding additional laser pulses, separated in time from the first, suppresses energy line shifts and allows for even more precision.

New kinds of self-accelerating optical beams emerge from the laboratory.

A quantum twist on digital holography offers improved imaging and the chance to reach new and difficult wavelength regions.

A carefully prepared light beam can either push or pull tiny particles, like the much larger tractor beams of science fiction.

Experiments show that normally transparent nanorods can absorb or reflect nearly 100% of light at a specific wavelength when the rods are arranged in a periodic two-dimensional array.

Ultrathin solar cells are cost efficient, but new theoretical tools are needed to understand how light interacts with cells thinner than its wavelength.

Optical microscopes can be adapted to measure the mass of individual cells.

A thin metal slab known as a superlens, which focuses light more sharply than its wavelength, could have an even higher resolution imaging rapidly varying electromagnetic fields.

A new metamaterial mirror comes with a control knob that varies the direction of the reflected light.