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.
Controlling light is an important technological challenge—not just at the large scale of optics in microscopes and telescopes, but also at the nanometer scale. Recently, physicists at the University of Amsterdam published ...
Optics & Photonics
Jan 8, 2026
0
44
Researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) have uncovered previously unobserved oscillation states—so-called Floquet states—in tiny magnetic vortices. Unlike earlier experiments, which required energy-intensive ...
Condensed Matter
Jan 8, 2026
0
94
Light can be sculpted into countless shapes. Yet building optical devices that can simultaneously manipulate many different optical patterns at once is extremely complicated, and remains a major challenge in modern photonics.
Optics & Photonics
Jan 8, 2026
0
38
Researchers at Princeton and North Carolina State University have developed a technique that substantially improves the ability to convert low-energy light into a high-energy version. The method has immediate applications ...
Optics & Photonics
Jan 7, 2026
0
72
Scientists at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have, for the first time, demonstrated a technique that synchronizes ultrashort X-ray pulses at the X-ray free-electron laser SwissFEL. This achievement opens new possibilities ...
Optics & Photonics
Jan 7, 2026
0
13
In future high-tech industries, such as high-speed optical computing for massive AI, quantum cryptographic communication, and ultra-high-resolution augmented reality (AR) displays, nanolasers—which process information using ...
Nanophysics
Jan 6, 2026
0
67
Controlling light at dimensions thousands of times smaller than the thickness of a human hair is one of the pillars of modern nanotechnology.
Nanophysics
Dec 29, 2025
0
48
Researchers from CIC nanoGUNE, in collaboration with the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC) and the Center for Materials Physics (CFM), have experimentally observed and theoretically verified flat-band ultrastrong ...
Nanophysics
Dec 18, 2025
0
0
Ultrashort laser pulses—that are shorter than a millionth of a millionth of a second—have transformed fundamental science, engineering and medicine. Despite this, their ultrashort duration has made them elusive and difficult ...
Optics & Photonics
Dec 18, 2025
0
32
Electrons determine everything: how chemical reactions unfold, how materials conduct electricity, how biological molecules transfer energy, and how quantum technologies operate. But electron dynamics happens on attosecond ...
Optics & Photonics
Dec 17, 2025
0
55
