Optics & lasers as a research area encompasses the fundamental and applied study of the generation, propagation, manipulation, and detection of light, with a particular emphasis on coherent and monochromatic radiation from lasers. It includes laser physics (gain media, optical cavities, nonlinear and quantum optical effects), beam shaping and guiding (waveguides, fibers, integrated photonics), optical materials and devices (mirrors, modulators, detectors), and advanced techniques such as ultrafast optics, high-power and high-intensity laser systems, laser spectroscopy, and laser-based metrology. This field underpins technologies in precision measurement, optical communication, imaging, microfabrication, and control of matter with light.
Researchers at the Institute for Molecular Science (NINS, Japan) and SOKENDAI have demonstrated a more than 2000% voltage-induced enhancement of near-field nonlinear optical responses. To achieve this giant modulation, they ...
Optics & Photonics
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Plasma mirrors capable of withstanding the intensity of powerful lasers are being designed through an emerging machine learning framework. Researchers in Physics and Computer Science at the University of Strathclyde have ...
Optics & Photonics
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By changing the physical structure of gold at the nanoscale, researchers can drastically change how the material interacts with light—and, as a result, its electronic and optical properties. This is shown by a study from ...
Nanophysics
13 hours ago
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Applied physicists in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have demonstrated a new way to structure light in custom, repeatable, three-dimensional patterns, all without the use of ...
Optics & Photonics
17 hours ago
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Time is almost up on the way we track each second of the day, with optical atomic clocks set to redefine the way the world measures one second in the near future. Researchers from Adelaide University worked with the National ...
General Physics
Jan 31, 2026
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Researchers from Regensburg and Birmingham have overcome a fundamental limitation of optical microscopy. With the help of quantum mechanical effects, they succeeded for the first time in performing optical measurements with ...
Optics & Photonics
Jan 30, 2026
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A novel apparatus at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has made extremely precise measurements of unstable ruthenium nuclei. The measurements are a significant milestone in nuclear physics ...
General Physics
Jan 30, 2026
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Researchers have created an optical device that can generate both electric and magnetic vortex-ring-like light patterns. These structured light vortices, known as skyrmions, are highly stable and resistant to disturbances, ...
Condensed Matter
Jan 29, 2026
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Dark matter is a mysterious type of matter that does not emit, absorb, or reflect light, yet is predicted to account for most of the universe's mass. While physicists have gathered extensive indirect evidence of its existence, ...
Building things so small that they are smaller than the width of a human hair was previously achieved by using a method called two-photon polymerization, also known as 2PP—today's state-of-the-art in 3D micro- and nanofabrication. ...
Nanophysics
Jan 28, 2026
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