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.
Light can carry angular momentum in two distinct ways. One comes from polarization, which describes how the electric field rotates. The other comes from the shape of the wavefront itself, which can twist like a corkscrew ...
Optics & Photonics
Mar 31, 2026
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Scientists at Oregon Health & Science University have uncovered a previously unknown system of internal "trade winds" that help cells rapidly move essential proteins to the front of the cell, reshaping how researchers understand ...
Cell & Microbiology
Mar 30, 2026
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When lasers were invented in the 1960s, they opened new avenues for scientific discovery and everyday applications, from scanners at the grocery store to corrective eye surgery. Conventional lasers control photons—individual ...
Optics & Photonics
Mar 30, 2026
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Can light behave like a whirlwind? It turns out it can—and such "optical tornadoes" have now been created in an extremely small structure by scientists from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, the Military ...
Optics & Photonics
Mar 27, 2026
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Researchers at the Würzburg site of the Cluster of Excellence ctd.qmat have succeeded in transferring the topological quantum Hall and spin Hall effects to a hybrid light-matter system by harnessing targeted material design. ...
Optics & Photonics
Mar 27, 2026
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Just as an antenna interacts with radio waves, light interacts with metallic nanostructures. Therefore, understanding how a structure influences field oscillations provides valuable insights into the structure's physical ...
Nanophysics
Mar 26, 2026
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A research group from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology reports in Nature an unprecedented achievement in electron microscopy: the direct measurement of "dark points" within light waves. By doing so, the researchers ...
Optics & Photonics
Mar 26, 2026
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Using X-ray lasers, researchers at Stockholm University have been able to determine the existence of a critical point in supercooled water at around -63 °C and 1,000 atmospheres. Ordinary water at higher temperatures and ...
General Physics
Mar 26, 2026
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181
Researchers from the University of Jyväskylä and Aalto University have developed a new method based on laser modification, which allows metal-organic materials to be grown locally one molecule-thick layer at a time. The method ...
Nanomaterials
Mar 25, 2026
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77
Caltech scientists have developed a new way to produce optical frequency combs—important tools in devices that keep time and measure distances very precisely—at the chip scale, an advance that should make it easier to incorporate ...
Optics & Photonics
Mar 25, 2026
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