Optical materials and elements, considered as a physical system, comprise engineered media and components that manipulate electromagnetic radiation in the optical frequency range through controlled refraction, reflection, diffraction, absorption, and emission. This system includes bulk and nanostructured dielectrics, semiconductors, and metals configured as lenses, mirrors, prisms, gratings, filters, waveplates, and coatings, characterized by parameters such as complex refractive index, dispersion, nonlinear susceptibilities, and anisotropy. Their collective behavior determines wavefront shaping, spectral and polarization control, and spatiotemporal light propagation, underpinning the performance of optical assemblies in imaging, beam delivery, photonic integration, and laser systems.
Researchers in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have discovered a new type of quantum light emitter in diamonds that could help overcome a number of challenges ...
Optics & Photonics
Jul 31, 2026
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An international team of researchers from École Polytechnique, Collège de France and Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has achieved a world first: the experimental realization of an all-optical photonic time crystal ...
Optics & Photonics
Jul 30, 2026
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There's a nice kind of irony buried in this story: One of the most sensitive instruments ever built, capable of measuring distortions smaller than the width of a proton, has been quietly held back by something as mundane ...
Astronomy
Jul 30, 2026
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Full-color displays normally require separate red, green and blue light emitters. A team from the University of Osaka and Ritsumeikan University has demonstrated another approach: a single light-emitting layer that produces ...
Optics & Photonics
Jul 30, 2026
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Mechanical strain is one of the most common tools used to tailor the properties of materials. In piezoelectric materials, stretching or compressing a crystal generates an electrical polarization. In piezomagnetic materials, ...
Condensed Matter
Jul 29, 2026
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As materials become thinner—now reaching the thickness of single atoms—it has become increasingly difficult to create sufficiently large sheets and transfer them without cracking them into tiny flakes. Recent work by a broad ...
Nanophysics
Jul 29, 2026
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We've been covering the journey of the Habitable Worlds Observatory for some time now. Over the past few years, it's gone from a proposal to a relatively fleshed-out plan for how and what the next Great Observatory should ...
Astronomy
Jul 27, 2026
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46
Light typically interacts with a material the same way whether it enters through the front or the back—like polarized sunglasses that work the same from either side. Cornell researchers have demonstrated a simple route to ...
Optics & Photonics
Jul 27, 2026
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30
Integrated photonic devices—tiny circuits that use light instead of electrons—are becoming increasingly important for scalable photonics technologies and high-bandwidth communications. They are particularly valuable for managing ...
Condensed Matter
Jul 27, 2026
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45
A new study published in Nature Physics reports the first direct experimental evidence of a Floquet topological state, a novel light-induced phase of matter that, until now, has existed only on paper and in simulations. Topological ...
