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.
Spintronic devices enable data processing with significantly lower energy consumption. They are based on the interaction between ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic layers. Now, a team from Freie Universität Berlin, HZB and ...
Condensed Matter
Apr 29, 2026
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Researchers at Tampere University have recently demonstrated that light can be used to precisely reshape soft materials without mechanical contact. They have developed light-responsive hydrogel thin films that enable programmable ...
Optics & Photonics
Apr 29, 2026
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Researchers at Skoltech have developed an ultra-compact electro-optic modulator based on silicon photonics and plasmonics that enables high-efficiency optical signal control within a small device footprint. The development ...
Optics & Photonics
Apr 28, 2026
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Scientists at the University of East Anglia have uncovered a hidden property of light that allows it to twist, spin and behave differently—without mirrors, materials or special lenses. In a breakthrough that could transform ...
Optics & Photonics
Apr 28, 2026
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Anyone who has ever used a microscope knows that it takes time to bring a sample into sharp focus. Each time you move the slide, the image blurs, and you have to stop and carefully turn a knob to bring everything back into ...
Optics & Photonics
Apr 28, 2026
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Under a microscope, a bouquet of lollipop-like structures, each smaller than a grain of sand, waves gently in a Petri dish of liquid. Suddenly, they snap together, like the jaws of a Venus flytrap, as a scientist waves a ...
Nanophysics
Apr 28, 2026
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Researchers from Skoltech and the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics have developed an approach that helps optimize the parameters of a laser-plasma source of attosecond pulses—ultrashort flashes of light used ...
General Physics
Apr 27, 2026
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MIT researchers discovered a paradoxical phenomenon in optical physics that could enable a new bioimaging method that's faster and higher-resolution than existing technology. They discovered that, under the right conditions, ...
Optics & Photonics
Apr 27, 2026
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141
For the first time, researchers have mapped how the boundaries of magnetic nanostructures behave on extremely short timescales. The work of physicist Johan Mentink of Radboud University shows that these boundaries are much ...
Nanophysics
Apr 26, 2026
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Many important objects in the world can be divided into two categories based on their chirality or handedness, including molecules important for life such as amino acids. Such chiral objects (formally defined as objects which ...
Nanophysics
Apr 24, 2026
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