Using optics to trace the flow of microplastics in oceans

Microplastics are tiny plastic particles less than 5 mm in diameter that have emerged as a novel marine environment pollutant. Microplastics usually result from a breakdown of larger plastic debris but can also be generated ...

Triple phase transition in a photonic quasicrystal observed

Together with their colleague Professor Stefano Longhi (Polytechnic Institute of Milan), physicists from the group of Professor Alexander Szameit (University of Rostock) have discovered a triple phase transition. At the critical ...

Near-field routing of hyperbolic metamaterials

Near-field light is invisible light at the subwavelength scale. Harnessed for a variety of practical applications, such as wireless power transfer, near-field light has an increasingly significant role in the development ...

Opto-mechanical non-reciprocity in fiber

The internet era that we live in depends completely on the transfer of vast amounts of information over optical fibers. Optical fibers are literally everywhere. In fact, the overall length of optical fibers installed on our ...

Laser light makes a comeback (literally)

Straight-line constant-speed propagation in free space is a basic characteristic of light. In a recent study published in Communications Physics, researchers from Osaka University discovered the phenomenon of reciprocating ...

Tailored light inspired by nature

Modern applications such as high resolution microsopy or micro- or nanoscale material processing require customized laser beams that do not change during propagation. This represents an immense challenge since light typically ...

Fast and flexible computation of optical diffraction

Diffraction is a classic optical phenomenon accounting for light propagation. The efficient calculation of diffraction is of significant value towards the real-time prediction of light fields. The diffraction of electromagnetic ...

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