Hitting a material with laser light sends vibrations rippling through its latticework of atoms, and at the same time can nudge the lattice into a new configuration with potentially useful properties – turning an insulator ...
General Physics
Nov 6, 2018
2
461
Researchers have peeked behind the curtain of the ultrafast phase transition of vanadium dioxide and found its atomic theatrics are much more complicated than they thought. It's a material that has fascinated scientists for ...
Condensed Matter
Nov 1, 2018
0
134
Scientists from the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have demonstrated a surprisingly simple way of flipping a material from one state into another, ...
Condensed Matter
Oct 22, 2018
0
794
The way that ordinary materials undergo a phase change, such as melting or freezing, has been studied in great detail. Now, a team of researchers has observed that when they trigger a phase change by using intense pulses ...
Condensed Matter
Oct 15, 2018
2
403
Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have used common electronics to build a laser that pulses 100 times more often than conventional ultrafast lasers. The advance could extend the benefits ...
Optics & Photonics
Sep 27, 2018
4
192
Canadian astronomers have identified mode changing and giant pulses in the millisecond pulsar known as PSR B1957+20. It is the first time when mode changing mechanism has been observed in a millisecond pulsar. The finding ...
Take a glass thread a thousand times thinner than a human hair. Use it as a wire between two metals. Hit it with a laser pulse that lasts a millionth of a billionth of a second.
General Physics
Jun 21, 2018
1
3167
Studying the fleeting actions of electrons in organic materials will now be much easier, thanks to a new method for generating fast X-rays.
Optics & Photonics
May 11, 2018
1
249
A technique to manipulate electrons with light could bring quantum computing up to room temperature.
Quantum Physics
May 10, 2018
7
3752
Although critical for varied applications, such as cutting and welding, surgery and transmitting bits through optical fiber, lasers have some limitations – namely, they only produce light in limited wavelength ranges. Now, ...
Optics & Photonics
Feb 2, 2018
0
141
