Probing semiconductor crystals with a sphere of light

Tohoku University researchers have developed a technique using a hollow sphere to measure the electronic and optical properties of large semiconducting crystals. The approach, published in the journal Applied Physics Express, ...

Researchers develop new variant of Maxwell's demon at nanoscale

Maxwell's demon is a machine proposed by James Clerk Maxwell in 1867. The hypothetical machine would use thermal fluctuations to obtain energy, apparently violating the second principle of thermodynamics. Now, researchers ...

Video: The making of the largest 3-D map of the universe

DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, will mobilize 5,000 swiveling robots – each one pointing a thin strand of fiber-optic cable – to gather the light from about 35 million galaxies.

Quantum optical cooling of nanoparticles

When a particle is completely isolated from its environment, the laws of quantum physics start to play a crucial role. One important requirement to see quantum effects is to remove all thermal energy from the particle motion, ...

Understanding high efficiency of deep ultraviolet LEDs

Deep ultraviolet light-emitting diodes (DUV-LEDs) made from aluminium gallium nitride (AlGaN) efficiently transfer electrical energy to optical energy due to the growth of one of its bottom layers in a step-like fashion. ...

Reactive optical matter: Light-induced motion

Newton's third law dictates that forces between interacting particles are equal and opposite for closed systems. In a non-equilibrium environment, the third law can be defied, giving rise to "nonreciprocal" forces. Theoretically, ...

New 2-D spectroscopy methods

"Put an excitation into the system and observe how it evolves." According to physicist Professor Tobias Brixner, this is the credo of optical spectroscopy. Various methods are known in literature. But generally only the behaviour ...

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