Browse Physics

A regularly spaced array of laser beams deflects particles from their usual course.

A new x-ray imaging technique has made its first foray into the third dimension.

The secret to probing clouds from afar may be igniting tiny fires in their water droplets.

Researchers challenge the idea that special materials can bend light the ‘wrong’ way and create the perfect lens.

Holograms make it possible to focus a beam of atoms into complicated patterns on a surface.

A new technique allows polarization of light to be used for encoding signals sent over fiberoptic lines.

The world’s most powerful lasers may be able to produce light pulses 100,000 times shorter than today’s shortest.

A powerful laser beam guides itself through a block of glass.

In response to light, most materials produce very short-range electromagnetic fields in addition to ordinary reflections. Theorists show how to calculate these fields, including the ‘optical quantum corral’ generated by a set of nanoscale posts.

Experiments on large bubbles may put to rest one of the mysteries surrounding the emission of light by bubbles in water.

Pairs of atomic-scale images made from photoelectron diffraction with circularly polarized light can be merged into a stereoscopic, 3D view.

A new technique gives high-resolution images of wave fronts inside microscopic structures used to manipulate light.

Physicists have used an artificial aurora to illuminate a layer of the ionosphere that has been difficult to observe.

Researchers have demonstrated a new way to make high frequency coherent light. A similar process could lead to a compact source of coherent x rays.

A new scheme allows measurements of optical frequencies as accurate as those of the best labs in the world, using only a single laser.

Under special conditions, pulses of light can outpace light waves in a vacuum.

Physicists have demonstrated amplification with electron-photon half-breeds called polaritons, suggesting the possibility of a new type of laser.

The reactions that lead to nuclear power or an atomic blast can now be initiated with laser light, allowing researchers to run new types of nuclear physics experiments.

Physicists have selectively broken certain bonds in a molecule while avoiding others in the most precisely controlled bond breaking ever achieved.

A physicist has invented a technique for identifying very small numbers of molecules using spectroscopy.