Optical & microwave phenomena as a research area investigates the generation, propagation, interaction, and detection of electromagnetic radiation spanning the optical (visible, ultraviolet, infrared) and microwave spectral ranges, with emphasis on their underlying physical mechanisms and cross-regime analogies. It encompasses coherent and incoherent light–matter interactions, waveguiding, scattering, nonlinear effects, resonances, and quantum electrodynamical aspects, as well as microwave cavity dynamics, dispersion, and near-field behavior. The field supports development of advanced spectroscopies, imaging modalities, communication and sensing technologies, and enables engineered materials and structures (e.g., photonic and microwave metamaterials) that tailor electromagnetic response across these frequency bands.
An international team of researchers, including scientists from HZDR and Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, for the first time directly observed how angular momentum is transferred and conserved within a crystal ...
Condensed Matter
May 12, 2026
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The fundamentals of quantum mechanics are minuscule. Scientists constantly home in on finer resolutions to measure, quantify, and control these fundamentals, like photons that carry light and have no mass unless they are ...
Optics & Photonics
May 12, 2026
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Quantum geometry describes quantum states in systems with changing system parameters, such as an electron spinning in a magnetic field whose direction is slowly changing. The state of the electron evolves, and this change ...
Optics & Photonics
May 6, 2026
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Scientists have discovered the cause of a persistent glitch that continues to disrupt superconducting quantum computers, even when they have built-in defenses. For all their advanced hardware, superconducting quantum computers ...
A two-dimensional lamellar crystal composed of atomically thin layers of lead iodide (PbI2) could be used to manufacture a new generation of circuits that use light and mechanical vibrations (rather than electrons) to transmit ...
Condensed Matter
May 5, 2026
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A research team from the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has successfully used mechanical stretching technology to dynamically control the emission color of gallium nitride (GaN) material from ...
Condensed Matter
Apr 28, 2026
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A novel approach for realizing the one-way quantum synchronization of phonons has been proposed by three theoretical physicists at RIKEN. Importantly, this method is remarkably resilient against practical challenges such ...
Optics & Photonics
Apr 24, 2026
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As long as there's been an internet, there's been a way to hack it. Scientists have spent decades imagining a different kind of network, one where the laws of physics make eavesdropping physically impossible, not just technically ...
Quantum Physics
Apr 21, 2026
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Today, I want to walk you through a deceptively simple innovation from the lab at Loughborough University (PI: Prof Marco Peccianti): what happens when we decorate a spintronic heterostructure with a sparse layer of plasmonic ...
Researchers at The University of Osaka, in collaboration with ULVAC, Inc. and Ritsumeikan University, have developed a new LED structure that generates circularly polarized light from a single chip. By combining a semipolar ...
Optics & Photonics
Apr 15, 2026
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