Browse Physics

A research team used a laser to produce large amounts of anti-electrons, opening up new possibilities for research on exotic astrophysical objects.

A proposal for a new type of cloaking device suggests a way to hide both a distant object and the cloak itself.

A laser beam in a squeezed state may be an effective source for cooling a macroscopic resonator.

The blurring effects of diffraction pose an obstacle to transmitting an image with all-optical technology. A method to reduce diffraction that takes advantage of the thermal motion of atoms could prove a way to keep images sharp.

Metamaterials can be designed to rotate light as it passes through them. If the effect is strong enough, it can lead to the material having a negative index of refraction and light bouncing around very differently than expected.

Lasers can make an opaque material transparent, but to determine how long this state survives, you have to shut off the lights.

An experiment showing that an optical fiber recoils as light exits it addresses a century-old controversy over the momentum of light in transparent materials.

Preparing a harmonic oscillator in a state with a well-defined energy is a tricky business. With the new tools provided by cavity and circuit quantum electrodynamics it is now possible to make these pure quantum states and watch how they evolve in time.

The optical equivalent of electron oscillations in periodic lattices has now been described by a fully quantum mechanical theory.

A new technique allows fluorescent particles to be precisely placed in photonic structures–the ‘circuit boards’ for future devices that would process signals using light.

Successive and rapid measurements of a quantum system can prevent it from evolving in time. This quantum Zeno effect has now been demonstrated for light inside a cavity.

Spatial maps of the photon energy emitted by plasmons on a metal surface reveal standing wave patterns caused by electron confinement.

Coupled semiconductor lasers can be used to generate controllable soliton emission patterns.

Laser beams made up of millions of sharply defined and coherently locked optical frequencies, called optical frequency combs, may provide a way to implement a powerful quantum computer.

Researchers in Japan have identified spin excitations in multiferroics that can be driven by electric fields.

Thick layers of disordered materials, such as milk or snow, scatter light so that very little of it gets through. Theorists say that a properly designed combination of incident light waves would be almost completely transmitted and we now have experimental proof of this remarkable result.

Researchers have shaped the time profile of a single photon. The work may benefit quantum information processing in fields such as quantum cryptography.

Squeezed states can enhance the sensitivity of a detector and the storage capability of quantum memory devices. Because these features improve with an increase in system size, researchers are exploring ways to produce squeezed states in large ensembles of atoms.

The response of nanostructured metal strips to an electromagnetic field may turn out to be similar to that of atomic gases. Periodic arrays of these artificial metal “molecules” could in principle form a metamaterial that slows light pulses and is easily integrated into optical circuits.

Two research groups show how to detect sound waves that have wavelengths as short as the spacing between atoms in a solid and frequencies in the terahertz range.