Laser solitons: Theory, topology and potential applications

In almost all situations, even in a vacuum, light cannot travel endlessly without dissipating. Pulses of light known as solitons that propagate along fibres for long distances without changing their shape or losing focus ...

Star nearing death offers a preview of our Sun's fate

An international team of astronomers has witnessed a rare dynamic event foreshadowing the death of a red giant star for the first time – a discovery that reinforces predictions about our Sun's ultimate demise.

Caught in the act: Images capture molecular motions in real time

Researchers have used ultra-high-speed X-ray pulses to make a high-resolution "movie" of a molecule undergoing structural motions. The research, published in Nature Chemistry, reveals the dynamics of the processes in unprecedented ...

Peering into plasma mirrors

When light interacts with a mirror which is moving towards it at a speed close to the speed of light, its wavelength is shifted into the extreme ultraviolet region of the spectrum. This effect was first predicted by Albert ...

Fluc­tu­a­tions in the void

In quantum physics, a vacuum is not empty, but rather steeped in tiny fluctuations of the electromagnetic field. Until recently it was impossible to study those vacuum fluctuations directly. Researchers at ETH Zurich have ...

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