Physicists are now using a tightly controlled laser and a cloud of ultracold atoms to imitate the behavior of electrons in solids, effectively building a quantum version of electronics out of light ...

Cooled to almost absolute zero, atoms not only move in waves like light but also can be focused into shapes called caustics, similar to the reflecting or refracting patterns light makes on the bottom ...

Engineers are turning what used to be a bulky optics bench into something that fits on the tip of a finger, and the latest photonic chips go a step further by splitting a single laser into a ...

Important instruments for neuroscience and medical diagnostics, optically pumped magnetometers measure responses of polarized atoms to produce information about the low-frequency external field. They ...

Cancer diagnoses traditionally require invasive or labor-intensive procedures such as tissue biopsies. Researchers at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) have now reported on a method ...

A scattering-invariant mode of light is generated by a spatial light modulator. This modulated beam propagates through free space (top) or a strongly scattering medium (bottom) such that the pattern ...