Laser systems, as physical systems, comprise an optical gain medium, an energy pump source, and an optical resonator configured to produce coherent, monochromatic, and highly directional electromagnetic radiation via stimulated emission. The gain medium (solid-state, gas, liquid, or semiconductor) is excited by optical, electrical, or chemical pumping, creating a population inversion between quantized energy levels. The resonator, typically a pair of mirrors or integrated waveguide structures, provides optical feedback and mode selection, defining spatial and spectral properties. System performance is characterized by thresholds, efficiency, beam quality (M²), temporal regime (CW or pulsed), and stability against thermal, mechanical, and nonlinear optical effects.
Reaching the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, would take hundreds of thousands of years using current rocket propulsion technology. Researchers in the J. Mike Walker '66 Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M ...
Space Exploration
Apr 22, 2026
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113
An international team of physicists has achieved a significant advance in laser science, demonstrating for the first time a practical route to dramatically boosting the intensity of high-power laser light.
Optics & Photonics
Apr 22, 2026
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82
If you walk across the open yard in front of the Physics, Math and Astronomy building at the University of Texas at Austin, you'll see a 17-story tower and a huge L-shaped building. What you won't see is what's underneath ...
Optics & Photonics
Apr 20, 2026
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25
Light does more than illuminate the world—it can also push and twist matter. It was back in the 1870s that James Clerk Maxwell first predicted that light carries momentum and can exert pressure on objects. Nearly a century ...
Optics & Photonics
Apr 20, 2026
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48
Have you ever wished to drive microscopic matter along an arbitrarily tailored trajectory instead of just a circle? That's exactly what we set out to achieve.
Thin films might not come up in conversation every day, but they are all around us. Take the metallic plastic films of chip bags, for example, or the anti-reflective coatings on eyeglasses. Even the coatings on pills that ...
Superconductivity
Apr 16, 2026
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47
For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that a laser-plasma accelerator can reliably drive a free-electron laser for more than eight hours. Published in Physical Review Accelerators and Beams, the result was achieved ...
Computer chips that cram billions of electronic devices into a few square inches have powered the digital economy and transformed the world. Scientists may be on the cusp of launching a similar technological revolution—this ...
Optics & Photonics
Apr 15, 2026
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90
Adelaide University researchers have successfully tested a new type of portable atomic clock at sea for the first time, using technology that could help power the next generation of navigation, communications and scientific ...
Optics & Photonics
Apr 14, 2026
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29
Optical vortices—light beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM)—are characterized by helical wavefronts and phase singularities. While they have been widely studied in recent decades, two fundamental limitations have ...
Optics & Photonics
Apr 9, 2026
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