It’s a rare person who can pick up a cheap laser pointer and not wield it like a lightsaber or a phaser, complete with sound effects. There’s just something about the “pew-pew” factor that makes ...

Schematic diagram and microscopic observation of an optical fiber doped with rare-earth atoms. The fluorescence from the entire optical fiber can be seen. (b) Schematic diagram and microscopic ...

Scientists have turned a long-standing sci‑fi idea into working hardware, using pure light to move data wirelessly through the air instead of relying on radio waves or copper traces. The result is a ...

- Development of the world's first practical surface-emitting laser suitable for optical fiber communications systems. - Utilization of quantum dots as an optical gain medium, enabled by NICT's ...

A tiny device can control laser light very precisely while using much less power, making it possible to build bigger and ...

A new microchip-sized device could dramatically accelerate the future of quantum computing. It controls laser frequencies with extreme precision while using far less power than today’s bulky systems.

Lasers are known for the monochromatic nature of their light, so much so that you might never have thought there could be such a thing as a white laser. But in the weird world of physics, a lot of ...

Scientists have demonstrated a sort of holographic strip that splits a single laser beam into five bespoke beams that create an optical knot. The work shows that optical knots could be used as a ...

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 ...