https://phys.org/physics-news/optics-photonics/ en-us The latest news on Optics and Photonics Distributed fiber-optic sensors are widely used to monitor temperature and strain in infrastructure, but their spatial resolution has long been limited. In a new study, researchers from Shibaura Institute of Technology and Yokohama National University, Japan, have demonstrated that operating near a previously avoided frequency regime and suppressing signal distortions allows reflection-based sensing to achieve a world-record spatial resolution of 6 mm among single-end-access configurations. This enables precise monitoring of temperature and strain in infrastructure. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-millimeter-scale-resolution-fiber-optic.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 20 Apr 2026 19:40:08 EDT news695922241 Today, I want to walk you through a deceptively simple innovation from the lab at Loughborough University (PI: Prof Marco Peccianti): what happens when we decorate a spintronic heterostructure with a sparse layer of plasmonic nanoparticles? This isn't just a lab curiosity—it's a step toward making terahertz sources more efficient, compact, and practical for real-world applications like high-speed communications, noninvasive imaging, and advanced spectroscopy. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-sprinkling-nanoparticles-spintronics.html Condensed Matter Mon, 20 Apr 2026 18:00:06 EDT news695895133 A new theoretical study finds shorter laser pulses achieve higher quantum efficiency for photoemission from a solid surface without increasing power or intensity. Using light to knock electrons loose from a surface—known as photoemission—may soon be achievable more easily in smaller labs with smaller lasers. Shortening the length of a laser pulse can increase the emitted electrons by several orders of magnitude without increasing the laser intensity or power, according to a University of Michigan Engineering study. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-ultrashort-laser-pulses-power-electron.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 20 Apr 2026 17:00:03 EDT news695905801 A team of international researchers, including an Aston University researcher, has cracked the code on how "breather" laser pulses work, creating a single mathematical model that explains two completely different laser behaviors for the first time. Ultrafast lasers emit extremely short pulses of light, lasting only picoseconds or femtoseconds, making them essential for applications ranging from eye surgery and biomedical imaging to precision materials processing and advanced manufacturing. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-mathematical-decades-puzzle-involving-ultrafast.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 20 Apr 2026 16:10:02 EDT news695917081 Superconducting qubits—bits of quantum information—have been widely considered a promising technology for moving quantum computing forward. But there's still much work to be done before they can be brought out of a near absolute zero temperature environment. The lab of Professor Hong Tang has recently published two studies that advance the technology. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-paths-scalable-quantum-optical-links.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 20 Apr 2026 15:30:01 EDT news695914322 If you walk across the open yard in front of the Physics, Math and Astronomy building at the University of Texas at Austin, you'll see a 17-story tower and a huge L-shaped building. What you won't see is what's underneath you. Two floors below ground, behind heavy double doors stamped with a logo that most students have never noticed, sits one of the most powerful lasers in the United States. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-ive-america-powerful-lasers-shot.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 20 Apr 2026 14:00:07 EDT news695903942 Light does more than illuminate the world—it can also push and twist matter. It was back in the 1870s that James Clerk Maxwell first predicted that light carries momentum and can exert pressure on objects. Nearly a century later, in the 1970s, Arthur Ashkin asked why not use this property of light to hold and push around tiny particles. He developed optical tweezers that use focused laser beams to trap and move nanoscale objects. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-hidden-property-power-future-nanomachines.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 20 Apr 2026 10:20:02 EDT news695894341 Have you ever wished to drive microscopic matter along an arbitrarily tailored trajectory instead of just a circle? That's exactly what we set out to achieve. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-generalized-optical-meta-spanners-empower.html Optics & Photonics Sun, 19 Apr 2026 10:30:02 EDT news695642706 A joint research team led by Professor Park Kyoung-Duck and Associate Director Suh Yung Doug of the Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) has succeeded in realizing a high-efficiency quantum light source that emits bright lights even at room temperature. The study is published in the journal Science Advances. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-bright-quantum-emission-room-temperature.html Optics & Photonics Sat, 18 Apr 2026 09:00:01 EDT news695395962 A collaborative research group has developed a fully automated roll-to-roll manufacturing platform capable of producing large-area visible metalenses at a rate of 300 units per second, marking a major breakthrough in translating metasurface technology from the laboratory to real-world industrial deployment. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-flat-optics-metalens-production.html Optics & Photonics Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:00:04 EDT news695564946 A new Bar-Ilan University study points to a major advance in quantum information processing, demonstrating a way to send, manipulate, and measure quantum information across many frequency channels simultaneously, rather than one at a time. The study was recently published in the journal Science Advances. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-quantum-bottleneck-wide-channels.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 16 Apr 2026 18:30:01 EDT news695575381 By directing pulses of laser light at atoms, researchers can study how radioactive elements decay in a matter of seconds. The method is described in a new thesis from the University of Gothenburg, which shows that the atomic nuclei of the elements neptunium and fermium are shaped like rugby balls. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-laser-method-insight-radioactive-atomic.html General Physics Thu, 16 Apr 2026 18:20:03 EDT news695563675 For the first time, researchers have demonstrated that a laser-plasma accelerator can reliably drive a free-electron laser for more than eight hours. Published in Physical Review Accelerators and Beams, the result was achieved by a team led by Finn Kohrell at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in collaboration with Texas-based company Tau Systems—and could soon make the technology vastly more accessible for a broad range of applications in industry and research. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-laser-plasma-free-electron-hours.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 16 Apr 2026 11:40:03 EDT news695554789 Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have developed a new approach to secure optical communication that hides information in the physical structure of light, making it difficult for unauthorized parties to intercept or decode. The study addresses a growing challenge: advances in quantum computing are expected to weaken many of today's encryption methods. While most security solutions rely on complex mathematical algorithms, this research adds protection earlier in the process—during the transmission of the signal itself. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-spatiotemporal-pulses-optical-communication-masking.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 15 Apr 2026 21:20:02 EDT news695490722 Researchers at The University of Osaka, in collaboration with ULVAC, Inc. and Ritsumeikan University, have developed a new LED structure that generates circularly polarized light from a single chip. By combining a semipolar InGaN light-emitting structure with a stripe-shaped silicon nitride metasurface, the team created a compact light source that reduces energy-conversion loss and operates at room temperature. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-chip-advance-ar-glasses-boost.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:40:06 EDT news695476992 Computer chips that cram billions of electronic devices into a few square inches have powered the digital economy and transformed the world. Scientists may be on the cusp of launching a similar technological revolution—this time using light. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-scientists-wavelength-lasers-tiny-circuits.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 15 Apr 2026 13:40:13 EDT news695473441 When laser flashes hit matter, electrons are knocked off their orbits around the atomic nuclei. This can generate extremely hot plasmas composed of charged particles—ions and electrons. Researchers at HZDR have now observed this ionization process in more detail than ever before. To do so, they combined two state-of-the-art lasers: the X-ray free-electron laser and the high-intensity optical laser ReLaX at the HED-HiBEF experiment station at the European XFEL in Schenefeld, near Hamburg. Their findings, published in Nature Communications, deliver fundamental insights into the interaction of high-energy lasers and matter under extreme conditions. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-copper-blasted-million-degree-plasma.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:40:04 EDT news695384221 For the last 80 years, the theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED), which describes all electromagnetic interactions, has been a cornerstone of the standard model, withstanding the scrutiny of countless experiments and agreeing with observations down to the smallest known precisions. Yet, some high-intensity scales of QED remain unexplored, prompting some to wonder if quantum computers could deal with these scales' inherent complexity. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-quantum-simulations-tackle-photon-polarization.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:20:09 EDT news695384043 Adelaide University researchers have successfully tested a new type of portable atomic clock at sea for the first time, using technology that could help power the next generation of navigation, communications and scientific systems. The research team, from the Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing (IPAS), developed the highly precise device and trialed it aboard a vessel provided by the Royal Australian Navy in July 2024. They have reported their findings in a new paper published in the journal Optica. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-generation-atomic-clock-successfully-sea.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 14 Apr 2026 10:00:13 EDT news695376003 Acoustic metamaterials are a fast-evolving family of materials which manipulate sound waves in ever more advanced ways. Now, a team led by Changqing Xu at Nanjing Normal University in China has engineered an acoustic metamaterial, a "ghost tunnel": a structure which acts as a near-perfect waveguide for sound entering through its ends, while being essentially invisible to waves incident on its sides. The results, published in Physical Review Letters, could open new avenues for manipulating sound waves in complex signal environments. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-ghost-tunnels-staying-invisible.html General Physics Mon, 13 Apr 2026 10:20:06 EDT news695290653 For years, scientists have dreamed of using atomically thin van der Waals (vdW) materials to build faster, more efficient photonic chips. These materials can be stacked and tuned with extraordinary precision, opening possibilities far beyond those of conventional technologies. The challenge is that they are extremely fragile, making them notoriously difficult to shape with standard nanofabrication tools. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-photonics-approach-chip-millions.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 13 Apr 2026 05:00:03 EDT news695046182 A new study, published in Physical Review Letters, reports that scientists have successfully imaged the formation of cavity-induced density waves induced by laser light in an ultracold quantum gas. Previously, only global signals, such as photon leakage or the peak in energy deposition of a fast charged particle (Bragg peaks), have been used to detect this kind of ordering. Prior to this study, there had been no direct, high-resolution in situ imaging of cavity-induced density-wave order in ultracold gases. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-high-resolution-imaging-captures-cavity.html Optics & Photonics Sat, 11 Apr 2026 11:50:01 EDT news694782569 Researchers from the Monash University School of Physics and Astronomy have flipped a long-held assumption in optics, showing that deliberately introducing controlled disorder into ultra-thin optical devices can dramatically increase their power and versatility, without making them bigger or more complex. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-scientists-mess-breakthrough-chaotic-generation.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:40:03 EDT news695041098 Optical vortices—light beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM)—are characterized by helical wavefronts and phase singularities. While they have been widely studied in recent decades, two fundamental limitations have restricted their broader impact: generating large numbers of vortices simultaneously and achieving high peak power in such configurations. Until now, large vortex arrays have been limited to low-power systems, whereas high-power demonstrations have typically involved only single vortices. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-megawatt-optical-vortices-array.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:20:06 EDT news694961373 Researchers have developed a new imaging technique that captures more information about ultrafast processes in the microscopic world than was previously possible. The technique offers scientists a powerful new tool to observe and analyze a wide range of ultrafast phenomena—which can happen in hundreds of femtoseconds—with unprecedented detail and speed. Writing in Optica, the researchers describe their new ultrafast imaging technique, called compressed spectral-temporal coherent modulation femtosecond imaging (CST-CMFI). https://phys.org/news/2026-04-shot-imaging-captures-ultrafast-microscopic.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 09 Apr 2026 10:00:08 EDT news694882480 A new analysis reveals what happens when very short or narrow electron beams encounter a particle. The research is published in the New Journal of Physics. Scientists should be able to achieve a new level of control over high-energy electrons interacting with a particle, according to the theoretical analysis by a RIKEN physicist and two colleagues. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-electronatom-encodes-quantum-state-electron.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 08 Apr 2026 13:40:02 EDT news694869137 Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have reported important progress in quantum physics and materials science by optically initializing, controlling, and reading out nuclear spin states in a molecular material for the first time. Because of their weak interaction with the environment, nuclear spins are particularly stable quantum information carriers. The research, published in Nature Materials, shows that molecular nuclear spins could be a promising building block for future quantum technologies. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-optical-nuclear-molecules-paths-quantum.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 08 Apr 2026 13:00:01 EDT news694866541 Near-infrared spectroscopy, or fNIRS, offers a way to monitor brain activity without surgery or radiation by tracking changes in blood flow and oxygenation. Light sources placed on the scalp send near-infrared light into the head, and detectors measure the light that scatters back. Because this light must pass through the scalp and skull before reaching the brain, the measured signal always includes a mix of superficial and cerebral contributions. Separating those signals has long been a central challenge for fNIRS researchers. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-layered-approach-sharpens-brain-optical.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 07 Apr 2026 10:20:03 EDT news694772401 Most people think of diamonds as high-end adornments. Not Ania Bleszynski Jayich. The UC Santa Barbara physicist sees diamonds, which she grows in the UC Quantum Foundry, as a potentially powerful foundation for quantum sensors. Sensors are currently much farther along in their development than other potential quantum applications. Diamond sensors are particularly promising because diamonds require relatively few quantum bits (qubits) to operate, whereas a quantum computer, for instance, requires more than 100,000, perhaps as many as a million, qubits to handle error correction, one of the main hurdles for quantum computing. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-mechanical-boost-diamond-quantum-sensor.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:30:01 EDT news694710121 Quantum mechanics tells us that a particle can never be perfectly still. But how precisely can it be oriented? A research team at the University of Vienna, together with colleagues at TU Wien and Ulm University, has now cooled the rotational motion of a levitated silica nanorotor all the way to its quantum ground state—in two orientational degrees of freedom. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-quantum-ground-state-rotation-dimensions.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 06 Apr 2026 12:20:03 EDT news694688821