https://phys.org/physics-news/optics-photonics/ en-us The latest news on Optics and Photonics Researchers at TU/e have demonstrated that energy transfer without loss via light or heat can occur over much greater distances than previously thought possible thanks to vibrations in microscopic gold rods. They succeeded in making energy jump from one particle to another over a distance of several millimeters without "spilling" energy along the way. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-fundamental-limit-energy-particles.html General Physics Wed, 27 May 2026 18:00:06 EDT news699117002 Researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) have developed a new procedure, enabling them to speed up elaborate computer simulations that analyze matter under extreme conditions. In particular, this work improves the evaluation of experiments at large-scale research facilities like the European XFEL—and should facilitate substantial progress, among others, in fusion research and laboratory astrophysics. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-imaginary-technique-ray-simulations-extreme.html Condensed Matter Tue, 26 May 2026 10:20:02 EDT news699003482 Flashes of femtosecond laser light, lasting just a few trillionths of a second, have made it possible to observe new magnetic structures for the first time. By using light as a remote control, researchers were able to switch magnetism into previously unseen three-dimensional states at the nanoscale. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-threedimensional-magnetic-laser.html Condensed Matter Mon, 25 May 2026 17:00:01 EDT news698942462 Solar panels have become more efficient over the years, but even the best designs still lose a large fraction of the energy they absorb. Scientists around the world have been searching for ways to capture more energy from every ray of sunlight and unlock the true potential of solar technology. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-supercharging-solar-cells-quantum-dot.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 25 May 2026 14:00:02 EDT news698932861 When a singer belts out a tune while a guitar player strums along, sound waves travel through the air, driving collective oscillations of the molecules within. Meanwhile, at the quantum level, something similar is going on. Atoms inside materials, everything from our bodies to metals and more, naturally jiggle around, creating tiny vibrational waves that ripple across the material. These vibrations are known as phonons: the quantum version of sound waves. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-tuning-quantum-acoustic-devices-sensors.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 25 May 2026 11:40:02 EDT news698925147 Being able to see light and detect radiation is of utmost importance at any frequency. While this challenge has been solved in the visible range, radiation detectors in the far-infrared and terahertz regimes are either not sensitive, slow, or require bulky and expensive, often cryogenically cooled devices, which hinders practical applications. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-quantum-metasurface-boosts-terahertz-sensitivity.html Optics & Photonics Sat, 23 May 2026 11:00:02 EDT news698679842 When we think about highly sensitive medical testing, we often imagine a hospital laboratory filled with large instruments, trained technicians, and carefully controlled conditions. This is especially true for optical biosensing, where scientists try to detect extremely small changes caused by biomolecules binding to a sensor surface. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-based-sensor-ultrasensitive-disease-portable.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 21 May 2026 17:40:01 EDT news698499656 Researchers from the Institut des NanoSciences de Paris, the Kastler Brossel Laboratory and the University of Glasgow have developed an innovative method that renders a scattering medium transparent solely for information carried by entangled photon pairs, while the same medium remains completely opaque to classical light. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-quantum-key-chaos.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 20 May 2026 14:20:01 EDT news698498041 Quantum technologies promise powerful new kinds of computers, giving scientists new tools to mimic and explore nature at its tiniest scales. At those levels, everything in nature—from atoms and electrons to light itself—follows the strange rules of quantum mechanics. But the real world is never perfectly clean: Signals fade, energy leaks away and systems pick up noise from their surroundings. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-chip-quantum-imperfections.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 19 May 2026 14:43:08 EDT news698420424 The rapid growth of large language models is placing increasing demands on data centers, where large volumes of data must be transferred efficiently between servers. Optical interconnects are essential for enabling this communication, but as data rates continue to rise, these systems must deliver higher bandwidth while maintaining low latency and energy efficiency. However, integrating electronic and photonic components remains challenging, as conventional approaches often introduce signal loss, limit interconnect density, and restrict scalability. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-reconfigurable-ge-si-photodetector-ultrahigh.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 18 May 2026 18:50:01 EDT news698344321 Modern energy demands are soaring as technologies like AI and IoT become more common, and researchers have been working hard to develop hardware that can keep up. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Tokyo has developed an ultrafast and energy-efficient nonvolatile switching device, described in an article published in the journal Science, that may soon be able to significantly reduce power consumption for high-energy demand technologies. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-ultrafast-device-power-optical-electrical.html Condensed Matter Mon, 18 May 2026 16:20:03 EDT news698335116 Chinese scientists have developed a programmable quantum computing prototype called Jiuzhang 4.0 that has set a new world record for optical quantum information technology, according to a study published May 13 in the journal Nature. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-prototype-optical-quantum-technology.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 18 May 2026 11:40:05 EDT news698320684 Researchers at UNSW Sydney have developed a nanoscale device that converts low-energy infrared and red light into higher-energy visible light, a breakthrough that could eventually improve solar panels, sensing technologies, and advanced manufacturing systems. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-infrared-boost-solar-panels-night.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 18 May 2026 10:40:01 EDT news698315208 In recent years, atomically thin materials—crystals only a few atoms thick—have attracted growing attention because they can exhibit physical properties that do not appear in conventional bulk materials. Among them, atomically thin magnetic materials are particularly intriguing, as they can host unconventional magnetic states and offer new possibilities for spin-based electronic technologies. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-bilayer-antiferromagnet-reveals-photocurrent-flips.html Condensed Matter Mon, 18 May 2026 05:00:35 EDT news698069701 Eighty years ago, Penn researchers J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly launched the age of electronic computing by harnessing electrons to solve complex numerical problems with ENIAC, the world's first general-purpose electronic computer. Today, that same architecture still underlies general computing, but electrons are beginning to show their limits. Because they carry a charge, they lose energy as heat, encounter resistance as they move through materials, and become harder to manage as chips incorporate more transistors and handle larger volumes of data. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-physicists-hybrid-particles-interact-strongly.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 15 May 2026 12:24:39 EDT news698066591 Technion researchers have developed, for the first time, a comprehensive physical model explaining how the properties of a radiating material, including absorption, emission, and quantum efficiency, affect the fundamental characteristics of the light it emits as a function of temperature. In essence, the emitted light changes its color, intensity, and randomness according to the material's properties and its temperature. The discovery was published in Optica and opens new possibilities for designing advanced light sources, optical sensors, and thermally based photonic systems. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-temperature-smarter-sensors-photonic-devices.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 12 May 2026 18:40:04 EDT news697816741 Simulating the nonlinear optical physics that underlies ultrafast laser systems is computationally demanding—a practical bottleneck in settings that require rapid feedback. A study by researchers at Stanford University, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory introduces a deep learning surrogate that delivers orders-of-magnitude acceleration over conventional simulation methods, while maintaining high fidelity across a challenging range of pulse shapes. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-ai-surrogate-nonlinear-optics-simulations.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 12 May 2026 16:30:01 EDT news697820282 Scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China have successfully deployed a multi-mode quantum relay network, achieving matter–matter entanglement over 14.5 kilometers, according to media reports. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-quantum-protocol-distance-barriers-fiber.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 12 May 2026 11:00:04 EDT news697797345 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 lattice. Using intense terahertz laser pulses, the researchers were able to selectively control these processes, which unveiled a surprising effect: During the angular momentum transfer, the direction of rotation reverses—caused by the rotational symmetry of the material. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-atoms-vibrate-circular-paths-unexpected.html Condensed Matter Tue, 12 May 2026 10:00:04 EDT news697795861 Whether in tooth enamel or in nanomaterials made of silicon, the orientation of tiny internal structures often determines the properties of a material. A new X-ray method can even make this nano-order visible when the structures are actually too small to be imaged directly. The method was developed by an international team led by the Helmholtz Center Hereon, and it opens up new possibilities to investigate materials and biological structures. The research is published in the journal Light: Science & Applications. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-ray-vision.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 12 May 2026 08:40:03 EDT news697793582 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 moving. The more precise the measurement, the more possibilities for better quantum technology or the ability to detect elusive dark-matter axions in deep space. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-method-energy-amounts-trillionth-billionth.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 12 May 2026 05:00:09 EDT news697739281 Researchers have developed a sensor about the size of a grain of rice that can measure forces and twisting motions in all directions using light instead of traditional electronics. The new sensor could help robotic tools and medical devices "feel" what they are touching, especially at very small scales. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-tiny-grain-rice-sensor-robots.html Optics & Photonics Sat, 09 May 2026 05:20:02 EDT news697522119 Over the past few decades, some physicists worldwide have been investigating unusual particle-like magnetic structures known as topological solitons. These structures could potentially be leveraged to develop new cutting-edge technologies, such as new magnetic memory devices and computing systems. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-laser-isolated-hopfions.html Condensed Matter Fri, 08 May 2026 08:00:03 EDT news697281397 Researchers have developed, for the first time in the world, incoherent dielectric tensor tomography (iDTT), a technology that can read complex three-dimensional optical fingerprints inside materials using only everyday LED illumination. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-3d-optical-fingerprints-materials-lasers.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 07 May 2026 13:00:02 EDT news697371121 Lidar systems use pulses of infrared light to measure distance and map a 3D scene with high resolution, allowing autonomous vehicles to rapidly react to obstacles that appear in their path. But traditional lidar sensors are expensive, bulky systems with many moving parts that degrade over time, limiting how the sensors can be deployed. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-photonics-advance-enable-compact-high.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 07 May 2026 11:40:01 EDT news697366559 Researchers at The University of Manchester's National Graphene Institute have shown that electrons in ultra-clean graphene can be steered with high precision while keeping their spin information intact, a key requirement for future low-power electronics and quantum devices. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-team-electron-ballistically-graphene.html Condensed Matter Thu, 07 May 2026 11:00:12 EDT news697277102 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 is quantified by what is known as the quantum geometric distance. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-quantum-geometry-based-toolkit-topological.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 06 May 2026 15:40:01 EDT news697291021 A new type of hologram technology has been developed that uses the motion of light as a key, revealing information only under specific conditions. This is gaining attention as a novel approach that can simultaneously overcome the limitations of existing optical communication and security technologies. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-hologram-technology-key-enables-hard.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 06 May 2026 09:20:01 EDT news697276861 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 information in the terahertz frequency range. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-inexpensive-material-compresses-paving-photonic.html Condensed Matter Tue, 05 May 2026 15:50:01 EDT news697212182 As Homer tells us, Odysseus made an epic journey, against the odds, from Troy to his home in Ithaca. He visited many lands, but mostly dwelt with the nymph Calypso on her island. We can imagine that his wife, Penelope, would have asked him about that particular time. Odysseus might have replied, "It was nothing. In fact, it was less than nothing. Negative five years I dwelt with Calypso. How else could I have arrived home after only ten years? If you don't believe me, ask her." https://phys.org/news/2026-05-physicists-negative-lab.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 01 May 2026 09:00:06 EDT news696844116