https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. In a recent Nature study, scientists have demonstrated an electrically driven perovskite laser using a dual-cavity design, addressing a challenge that has persisted in the field for over a decade. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-scientists-electrically-driven-perovskite-laser.html Optics & Photonics Sun, 28 Sep 2025 10:00:01 EDT news678107757 Once only a part of science fiction, lasers are now everyday objects used in research, health care and even just for fun. Previously available only in low-energy light, lasers are now available in wavelengths from microwaves through X-rays, opening a range of different downstream applications. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-scientists-shortest-hard-ray-pulses.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 11 Jun 2025 11:00:07 EDT news668762761 To produce light, lasers typically rely on optical cavities, pairs of mirrors facing each other that amplify light by bouncing it back and forth. Recently, some physicists have been investigating the generation of "laser light" in open air without the use of optical cavities, a phenomenon known as cavity-free lasing in atmospheric air. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-mechanism-energy-nitrogen-argon-enables.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 23 Aug 2024 08:10:01 EDT news643467806 Researchers at IMDEA Nanociencia have fabricated high quality microspheres from conjugated organic polymer blends with excellent lasing properties. The laser emission of the microspheres has the highest quality factor reported to date, Q>18,000. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-polymer-blend-microspheres-ultra-threshold.html Nanophysics Mon, 22 Jul 2024 16:41:35 EDT news640885293 Lasers are a significant historical invention with ubiquitous impact in society. The concept also has interdisciplinary applications as phonon lasers and atom lasers. A laser in one physical domain can be pumped by energy in another. Nevertheless, all lasers demonstrated in practice have only lased in one physical domain thus far. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-laser-squared-two-domain-photon-phonon.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 17 Jul 2023 11:20:01 EDT news608810673 In a result decades in the making, Los Alamos scientists have achieved light amplification with electrically driven devices based on solution-cast semiconductor nanocrystals—tiny specs of semiconductor matter made via chemical synthesis and often called colloidal quantum dots. https://phys.org/news/2023-05-amplification-emission-electrically-driven-colloidal.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 03 May 2023 16:47:22 EDT news602351238 A Los Alamos National Laboratory team has overcome key challenges toward technologically viable high-intensity light emitters based on colloidal quantum dot technology, resulting in dual-function devices that operate as both an optically excited laser and a high-brightness electrically driven light-emitting diode (LED). https://phys.org/news/2023-03-dual-purpose-laser-device-based-colloidal.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 27 Mar 2023 09:35:04 EDT news599128501 Since the introduction of the first ruby laser—a solid-state laser that uses the synthetic ruby crystal as its laser medium—in 1960, the use of lasers has expanded significantly in scientific, medical and industrial fields. https://phys.org/news/2023-01-scientists-phonon-photon-lasing-optomechanical.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 13 Jan 2023 13:31:03 EST news592839062 Ultrafast laser technologies provide new strategies for remote sensing of atmospheric pollutants and hazardous biochemical agents due to their unique advantages of high peak power, short pulse duration and broad spectral coverage. https://phys.org/news/2022-06-air-lasing-tool-atmospheric.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 09 Jun 2022 10:40:01 EDT news573988973 Stimulated scattering in supermode microcavities, such as Raman or Brillouin lasers, has shown unprecedented merit for precision measurements by exploiting the beat note in their lasing spectra. This beat note corresponds to the energy splitting of supermodes and is highly sensitive to any external perturbations. However, a pivotal question has puzzled the researchers for two decades: are these supermode microcavity lasers single or dual modes? Now, a research team led by Professor Xiao Yunfeng at Peking University has revealed the lasing dynamics of a stimulated scattering laser in a supermode microcavity, and experimentally demonstrated its single-mode nature. This work has been published online in PNAS. https://phys.org/news/2021-06-supermode-microcavities-single-dual-mode-lasing.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 01 Jun 2021 09:53:23 EDT news541760001 Tiny molecular forces at the surface of water droplets can play a big role in laser output emissions. As the most fundamental matrix of life, water drives numerous essential biological activities, through interactions with biomolecules and organisms. Studying the mechanical effects of water-involved interactions contributes to the understanding of biochemical processes. According to Yu-Cheng Chen, professor of electronic engineering at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), "As water interacts with a surface, the hydrophobicity at the bio-interface mainly determines the mechanical equilibrium of the water. Molecular hydrophobicity at the interface can serve as the basis for monitoring subtle biomolecular interactions and dynamics." https://phys.org/news/2021-01-lasing-mechanism-droplets.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 28 Jan 2021 13:50:45 EST news531064241 In the past two decades, great efforts have been made to achieve lasers based on colloidal quantum dots (CQDs), especially CQD-based single-mode lasers, which is important in on-chip optical processing and data storage due to low noise and good monochromaticity. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-scientists-broad-band-single-mode-lasers-colloidal.html Condensed Matter Thu, 17 Sep 2020 07:55:14 EDT news519548112 An international team of researchers led by Kyushu University and Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has demonstrated stable, continuous lasing at room temperature for over an hour from a class of low-cost materials called perovskites, finally overcoming a phenomenon that has so far prevented such long operation. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-stable-lasing-low-cost-perovskites-room.html Materials Science Wed, 02 Sep 2020 11:00:08 EDT news518260828 Multicolor single-mode polarized microlasers containing an output range from visible light to the near-infrared have significant applications in photonic integration and multimodal chemical sensing or imaging applications. However, such devices are very difficult to realize in practice. In a new report, Huajun He and a research team in physics, materials science and chemistry in Singapore, China and the U.S., developed a single crystal with multiple segments to generate controlled, single-mode, near-infrared (NIR) lasing. Multiple segments of the single crystal were based on a metal organic framework (MOF) hybridized with dye molecules suited for green, red and near-infrared lasing as computationally simulated. The segmented assembly of different dye molecules in the microcrystal caused it to act as a shortened resonator to achieve dynamic, multicolor single-mode lasing with a low three-color-lasing threshold (red, green and NIR). The findings will open a new route to explore single-mode, micro/nanolasers constructed with MOF engineering for biophotonic applications. The work is now published on Nature Light: Science & Applications. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-metal-framework-mof-microcrystals-multicolor.html Condensed Matter Fri, 21 Aug 2020 10:10:02 EDT news517222301 Since different tissues, cells or biochemicals have different (such as optical, thermal and acoustic) responses to different wavelengths of light, a light source with visible to near-infrared (NIR) multi-color output provides the fundamentals for multi-modal/multi-dimensional sensing/imaging. On the other hand, the polarization properties of light provide an opportunity for the analysis and processing of scattered light signals and can also help to obtain rich structural information in biological materials. In addition, single-mode micro-nano lasers meet the application requirements of miniaturized photonic devices with high information accuracy, avoiding false signals and overlapping interference of different optical signals, which have the potential to achieve targeted sensing/imaging of various cells and molecules when combined with multi-color output characteristics. If a material can combine the advantages of broadband multi-color output, polarization and single-mode micro-nano lasing, it is very useful for multi-mode miniaturized biochemical sensing or imaging, but there is no report of corresponding materials to date. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-mof-based-multicolor-single-mode-microlaser.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 18 Aug 2020 12:09:18 EDT news516971356 Lead-halide perovskites are considered one of the most promising materials for the production of the lasers of the future. A new joint Tel Aviv University (TAU) and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) study published in Nature Communications on February 28 demonstrates remarkable continuous lasing action in devices made from perovskites. https://phys.org/news/2019-06-lasing-action-devices-perovskite-materials.html General Physics Tue, 04 Jun 2019 07:53:18 EDT news478853590 Researchers from Japan have demonstrated that a long-elusive kind of laser diode based on organic semiconductors is indeed possible, paving the way for the further expansion of lasers in applications such as biosensing, displays, healthcare and optical communications. https://phys.org/news/2019-05-laser-diodes-reality.html General Physics Fri, 31 May 2019 07:08:46 EDT news478505318 Lasers are widely used in household appliances, medicine, industry, telecommunications and more. Several years ago, scientists introduced nanolasers. Their design is similar to that of the conventional semiconductor lasers based on heterostructures in common use for several decades. The difference is that the cavities of nanolasers are exceedingly small, on the order of the wavelength of the light they emit. Since they mostly generate visible and infrared light, the size is on the order of one millionth of a meter. https://phys.org/news/2019-02-physicists-big-nanolaser.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 07 Feb 2019 08:30:02 EST news468750101 Recent years have seen a steady increase in the number of research reports dealing with full control of phonons. The word "phononics" is slowly entering the scientific vocabulary to indicate a platform in which coherent phonons can be generated, harnessed and detected. In the field of photonics, lasers were a key element to fully enable the technology, but development was not achieved until lasers became easy to build and control. Likewise, despite the so-called "phonon laser" that has been demonstrated in several publications, the high device quality (narrow linewidth) and strict experimental demands of vacuum and low temperature necessary for observable effects or potential applications make it too complex a source for a rapid implementation.  https://phys.org/news/2015-10-physical-mechanism-phonon-lasing-driven.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 28 Oct 2015 09:46:06 EDT news365244357 (PhysOrg.com) -- Random lasing, Robin Kaiser tells PhysOrg.com, is like standard lasing, with a little bit of a twist: “You don’t know the direction the photons will go, as you do with a more standard laser. This is because the feedback normally produced by a cavity, which sets a propagation axis, is now provided by multiple scattering in all directions. Light is randomly scattered throughout the structure of the laser, exciting further light-emitting processes. Light in a random laser does not come out in a precise direction; it comes out in all directions.” https://phys.org/news/2009-05-random-lasing-cold-atom-cloud.html General Physics Mon, 18 May 2009 11:06:44 EDT news161863563