From The Skylark of Space to Star Wars, no self-respecting science fiction spaceship would break orbit without a tractor beam on board. We’re still a long way from locking on to errant ...

A surprising trick that allows a beam of light to be completely absorbed even in the thinnest of layers: ... Science, 2022; 377 (6609): 995 DOI: 10.1126/science.abq8103; ...

Wider light beams have many applications, ... Photonic waveguide to free-space Gaussian beam extreme mode converter. Light: Science & Applications, 2018; 7 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41377-018-0073-2; ...

There are lots of situations where getting a look at the human brain can be very helpful. Unfortunately, our heads are famously opaque, so decades of research and development have gone into finding ...

By leveraging the concept of chirality, or the difference of a shape from its mirror image, EPFL scientists have engineered ...

More information: Tong Nan et al, Generation of structured light beams with polarization variation along arbitrary spatial trajectories using tri-layer metasurfaces, Opto-Electronic Science (2024 ...

A new type of laser could emit more stable, energy-efficient light beams than its conventional counterparts. ... The device, described online February 1 in Science, ...

Cloaking technologies could become a reality with a specially designed material that can mask itself from other forms of light when it is hit with a "beam of invisibility." ...

If you could sit perfectly still in a patch of space far from any stars, planets, or particles — utter emptiness — you might expect nothing at all to happen. No heat, no sound, no light. But the ...

Typically, lasers emit light of one pure color, or wavelength. A new little laser breaks that mold by generating a beam containing all the wavelengths in a swath of the electromagnetic spectrum ...

As a 16-year-old boy, Albert Einstein imagined chasing after a beam of light in the vacuum of space. He mused on that vision for years, turning it over in his mind, asking questions about the ...

A beam of light (top left) is split in two and heads down separate paths. If the paths are recombined the two waves create an interference pattern. If not, a particle is detected along only one path.