/ en-us Â鶹ÒùÔº internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Â鶹ÒùÔºics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. As fast as modern electronics have become, they could be much faster if their operations were based on light, rather than electricity. Fiber optic cables already transport information at the speed of light; to do computations on that information without translating it back to electric signals will require a host of new optical components. /news/2025-05-memory-chiral-photonic-device-enables.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Optics & Photonics Wed, 28 May 2025 15:34:53 EDT news667665287 In the realm of general relativity, black holes are well-known for their ability to trap light and matter by bending spacetime, creating a point of no return. While black holes have fascinated scientists and the public alike, another concept, the white hole, has remained more theoretical. A white hole is thought to be the reverse of a black hole, expelling light and matter rather than absorbing them. Now, a team of researchers has designed a novel optical device with intriguing similarities with both these elusive cosmic phenomena. /news/2025-04-optical-device-mimics-black-white.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Optics & Photonics Tue, 15 Apr 2025 14:53:03 EDT news663947582 Chiral-structural-color materials produce color through microscopic structures that interact with light rather than through pigmentation or dyes. Some beetle exoskeletons, avian feathers, butterfly wings, and marine organisms feature these structures naturally, producing iridescent or polarization-dependent colors. Over the last 10–15 years, scientists have made progress in developing artificial chiral-structural-color materials. /news/2025-02-polymer-microdomes-reveal-tunable-chiral.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 27 Feb 2025 12:40:03 EST news659882402 Two heads are better than one, as the saying goes, and sometimes two instruments, ingeniously recombined, can accomplish feats that neither could have done on its own. /news/2025-02-microscope-reveals-full-3d-molecular.html Molecular & Computational biology Sat, 22 Feb 2025 03:07:04 EST news659416015 Terahertz (THz) waves, situated between the microwave and infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, have drawn considerable attention over the past two decades. /news/2025-01-scientists-device-modulate-polarization-thz.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 23 Jan 2025 11:03:03 EST news656852581 Skyrmions, recognized for their intricate spin configurations, have captivated researchers as topological quasiparticles with vast potential in data storage and information technology. Recently, optical skyrmions—light-based counterparts of these quasiparticles—have emerged as a promising avenue for developing advanced optical systems with unique topological properties. /news/2024-12-flexible-metafiber-device-generate-optical.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 09 Dec 2024 17:30:01 EST news652977902 The interactions between quantum spins underlie some of the universe's most interesting phenomena, such as superconductors and magnets. However, physicists have difficulty engineering controllable systems in the lab that replicate these interactions. /news/2024-09-floquet-tunes-ultracold-molecule-interactions.html Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Thu, 12 Sep 2024 16:49:04 EDT news645378541 Optical waves propagating through air or multi-mode fiber can be patterned or decomposed using orthogonal spatial modes, with far-ranging applications in imaging, communication, and directed energy. Yet the systems that perform these wavefront manipulations are cumbersome and large, restricting their utilization to high-end applications. /news/2024-06-3d-microscale-photonic-lantern-opportunities.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 03 Jun 2024 23:00:02 EDT news636644102 The future of optical communications just got brighter. In a development reported in Advanced Photonics, researchers from Nanjing University have introduced iso-propagation vortices (IPVs), a novel concept that offers a solution to a long-standing challenge faced by scientists and engineers: how to increase information processing capacity while overcoming the limitations of traditional vortex beams. /news/2024-05-iso-propagation-vortices-optical-multiplexing.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 20 May 2024 10:10:07 EDT news635418601 Unconventional superconducting states are states of superconductivity rooted in physical processes that do not conform with the conventional theory of superconductivity, namely Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer (BCS) theory. These states are characterized by close interactions between magnetism and superconductivity. /news/2024-04-spontaneous-emergence-1d-superconducting-stripes.html Superconductivity Mon, 08 Apr 2024 09:39:39 EDT news631787972 In contrast to conventional mirrors, light can be reflected on surfaces known as metasurfaces without changing its polarization. This phenomenon has now been proven by physicists at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL). The discovery enables circulating light to be used to reliably detect chiral molecules. /news/2024-01-physicists-concept-chiral-molecules.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 31 Jan 2024 11:18:02 EST news625922281 By analyzing the data from the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS), astronomers from the Christ University in Bangalore, India, have serendipitously discovered a new ring galaxy, which received designation DES J024008.08-551047.5 and may belong to the rare class of polar ring galaxies. The finding was reported in a paper published August 29 on the pre-print server arXiv. /news/2023-09-galaxy-indian-astronomers.html Astronomy Tue, 05 Sep 2023 09:10:01 EDT news613123109 Precise control of light is a crucial requirement in optical imaging, sensing, and communication. Traditional lenses employed for the purpose have limitations, necessitating more precise and compact solutions. To address this need, researchers have developed metalenses, ultrathin lenses constructed from nanomaterials that are smaller in size than the wavelength of light. These sub-wavelength elements provide the means to manipulate light waves with exceptional precision, facilitating a precise control of the amplitude, phase, polarization, and direction of light waves. /news/2023-07-image-quality-broadband-achromatic-polarization-insensitive.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 25 Jul 2023 15:44:03 EDT news609518641 Researchers at Columbia Engineering have developed a new class of integrated photonic devices—"leaky-wave metasurfaces"—that can convert light initially confined in an optical waveguide to an arbitrary optical pattern in free space. These devices are the first to demonstrate simultaneous control of all four optical degrees of freedom, namely, amplitude, phase, polarization ellipticity, and polarization orientation—a world record. /news/2023-05-leaky-wave-metasurfaces-interface-free-space-optical.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Mon, 08 May 2023 13:10:24 EDT news602770220 Already used in computers and MRI machines, superconductors—materials that can transmit electricity without resistance—hold promise for the development of even more advanced technologies, like hover trains and quantum computing. Yet, how superconductivity works in many materials remains a mystery that limits its applications. /news/2022-11-superconductivity-newly-discovered-kagome-metals.html Superconductivity Mon, 07 Nov 2022 16:04:03 EST news587059441 Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light have managed for the first time to create a unidirectional device that significantly increases the quality of a special class of transmitted signals in optical communications: optical vortices. /news/2022-10-breakthrough-optical-transmission-one-way-street.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 20 Oct 2022 10:46:03 EDT news585481562 Brown dwarfs are known as "failed stars," owing to the lack of central hydrogen burning. They bridge the gap between planets and stars. Some brown dwarfs are found to maintain kilogauss magnetic fields and produce flaring radio emissions, similar to aurora on magnetized planets in solar system, arousing astronomers' curiosities about their field properties and dynamics. /news/2022-07-statistical-analysis-radio-flaring-brown-dwarf.html Astronomy Fri, 08 Jul 2022 11:17:23 EDT news576497841 For two weeks in June 2020, a massive dust plume from Saharan Africa crept westward across the Atlantic, blanketing the Caribbean and Gulf Coast states in the U.S. The dust storm was so strong, it earned the nickname "Godzilla." /news/2021-05-record-shattering-trans-atlantic-storm.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 26 May 2021 13:14:34 EDT news541253670 Graph representations can solve complex problems in natural science, as patterns of connectivity can give rise to a magnitude of emergent phenomena. Graph-based approaches are specifically important during quantum communication, alongside quantum search algorithms in highly branched quantum networks. In a new report now published on Science Advances, Max Ehrhardt and a team of scientists in physics, experimental physics and quantum science in Germany introduced a hitherto unidentified paradigm to directly realize excitation dynamics associated with three-dimensional networks. To accomplish this, they explored the hybrid action of space and polarization degrees of freedom of photon pairs inside complex waveguide circuits. The team experimentally explored multiparticle quantum walks on complex and highly connected graphs as testbeds to pave the way to explore the potential applications of fermionic dynamics in integrated photonics. /news/2021-03-exploring-complex-graphs-three-dimensional-quantum.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Tue, 16 Mar 2021 10:00:01 EDT news535107338 Macrophages—immune cells that both fight infections and fix the damage they cause—are often placed into two categories: those that increase inflammation (known as "M1") to attack, and those that decrease inflammation to begin the healing process ("M2"). /news/2021-01-closer-immune-cells.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Thu, 21 Jan 2021 07:51:29 EST news530437574 Advanced optoelectronics require materials with newly engineered characteristics. Examples include a class of materials named metal-halide perovskites that have tremendous significance to form perovskite solar cells with photovoltaic efficiencies. Recent advances have also applied perovskite nanocrystals in light-emitting devices. The unusually efficient light emission of cesium lead-halide perovskite may be due to a unique excitonic fine structure made of three bright triplet states that minimally interact with a proximal dark singlet state. Excitons are electronic excitations responsible for the emissive properties of nanostructured semiconductors, where the lowest-energy excitonic state is expected to be long lived and hence poorly emitting (or 'dark'). /news/2021-01-multidimensional-coherent-spectroscopy-reveals-triplet.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Tue, 19 Jan 2021 09:30:04 EST news530177034 Researchers at Stanford University have recently carried out an in-depth study of nematic transitions in iron pnictide superconductors. Their paper, published in Nature Â鶹ÒùÔºics, presents new imaging data of these transitions collected using a microscope they invented, dubbed the scanning quantum cryogenic atom microscope (SQCRAMscope). /news/2020-04-imaging-nematic-transitions-iron-pnictide.html Superconductivity Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Thu, 30 Apr 2020 09:30:01 EDT news507456752 Spin is a fundamental quantum property that influences a range of physical and chemical phenomena associated with it. Using a material's spin property to carry current has applications in transferring data at much higher speed, for example, and achieves better energy efficiency than traditional devices that rely on electrical charges. However, this requires a material that can generate long-lived pure spin current with high efficiency. /news/2020-02-thinning-weyl-semimetals-spintronics.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Tue, 04 Feb 2020 08:14:32 EST news500026467 Discovering ways to control the topological aspects of quantum materials is an important research frontier because it can lead to desirable electrical and spin transport properties for future device technologies. Now MPSD scientists have discovered a pioneering laser-driven approach to generate a topological state in graphene. Their work has just been published in Nature Â鶹ÒùÔºics. /news/2019-11-laser-pulses-topological-state-graphene.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Tue, 05 Nov 2019 07:24:24 EST news492161059 Â鶹ÒùÔºicists envision that the future of quantum computation networks will contain scalable, monolithic circuits, which include advanced functionalities on a single physical substrate. While substantial progress has already been made for a variety of applications on different platforms, the range of diverse photonic states that can be manipulated on demand on a single chip remain limited. This is specifically observed for dynamic time management in quantum devices. /news/2019-01-nonlinear-quantum-electro-optic-circuits.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Mon, 28 Jan 2019 09:30:01 EST news467621405 Usually when physicists perform quantum entanglement between particles—whether it be qubits, atoms, photons, electrons, etc.—the particles are distinguishable in some way. Only recently have physicists demonstrated the feasibility of generating entanglement between particles that are completely identical. Interestingly, this entanglement exists just because of the indistinguishability of the particles, without any interaction between them. /news/2018-06-future-quantum-technologies-exploit-identical.html Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Fri, 15 Jun 2018 11:20:02 EDT news448252601 Chemists at the Lomonosov Moscow State University, in collaboration with Czech partners, have synthesized and studied new liquid-crystal photochromic polymers. These polymers combine optical properties of liquid crystals with mechanical properties of polymers. They quickly change molecular orientation under the influence of external fields and form coatings, films and details of complex shape. An important advantage of such systems in comparison with low-molecular-mass liquid crystals is that at room temperature, liquid-crystal polymers exist in a glass-like state, with fixed molecular orientation. /news/2017-08-scientists-liquid-crystalline-photochrom.html Materials Science Mon, 21 Aug 2017 05:48:28 EDT news422513274 During the 20th century, the average temperature of the continental United States rose by almost 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.5 degree Celsius)—everywhere, that is, except in the Southeast. There, until the 1980s, the temperature actually decreased slightly. Climate scientists dubbed this peculiar phenomenon the "warming hole," and it was the cause of much speculation. But beginning in the 1990s, temperatures in the Southeast began to warm again, and in the early years of the 21st century this warming has accelerated. /news/2017-08-poor-air-quality-mask-global.html Earth Sciences Tue, 08 Aug 2017 06:49:48 EDT news421393727 A space-based sensor that can "see" through fog, clouds and darkness has given scientists their first continuous look at the boom-bust cycles that drive polar plankton communities. /news/2016-12-space-based-lidar-plankton.html Earth Sciences Mon, 19 Dec 2016 11:00:10 EST news401350596 Researchers have created a new magnetic mirror-based device that could one day help cosmologists discover new details about ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves, particularly those emitted when the universe was extremely young. /news/2016-12-magnetic-mirror-gravitational-early-universe.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 13 Dec 2016 10:32:04 EST news400847515