Topological ideas have recently taken the center stage of modern electromagnetics. Typical topological photonic systems are based on nonreciprocal materials, a class of materials that enables asymmetric light–matter interactions. In particular, nonreciprocal platforms may support unidirectional...

Research from the lab of Matthew Lew at Washington University in St. Louis offers entirely new ways to see the very small....

Just about every car, train and plane that's been built since 1970 has been manufactured using high-power lasers that shoot a continuous beam of light. These lasers are strong enough to cut steel, precise enough to perform surgery, and powerful enough to carry messages into deep space. They are so...

Optical imaging and characterization of weakly scattering phase objects, such as isolated cells, bacteria and thin tissue sections frequently used in biological research and medical applications, have been of significant interest for decades. Due to their optical properties, when these 'phase...

Unlike fictional laser swords, real laser beams do not interact with each other when they cross—unless the beams meet within a suitable material allowing for nonlinear light-matter interaction. In such a case, wave mixing can give rise to beams with changed colors and directions....

An international research collaboration has discovered how to exploit certain defects to protect confined energy in acoustics systems. Their experimental approach provides a versatile platform to create at-will defects for further theoretical validation and to improve control of waves in other...

Some metals are in liquid form, the prime example being mercury. But there are also enormous quantities of liquid metal in the Earth's core, where temperatures are so high that part of the iron is molten and undergoes complex flows. A team at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has now...

What will it take to make our electronics smarter, faster, and more resilient? One idea is to build them from materials that are topological....

Researchers from PSI's Spectroscopy of Quantum Materials group together with scientists from Beijing Normal University have solved a puzzle at the forefront of research into iron-based superconductors: the origin of FeSe's electronic nematicity. Using Resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) at...

Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), created in ultracold bosonic atoms and degenerate quantum gases, are a macroscopic quantum phenomenon and are considered as a single particle in mean-filed theory. By preparing the BECs or ultracold atomic gases onto optical lattices, the existence of nonlinear...