Increasingly complex applications such as artificial intelligence require ever more powerful and power-hungry computers to run. Optical computing is a proposed solution to increase speed and power ...

Imperial physicists have recreated the famous double-slit experiment, which showed light behaving as particles and a wave, in time rather than space. The experiment relies on materials that can change ...

A U.K.-Portuguese research group is proposing a new solar cell design based on diffraction gratings – optical components that split and diffract light into several beams. They claim this could lead to ...

A pulse of light sets the tempo in the material. Atoms in a crystalline sheet just a few atoms thick begin to move—not randomly, but in a coordinated rhythm, twisting and untwisting in sync like ...

Light microscopy is the only way in which we can look inside a living cell, or living tissues, in three dimensions. An electron microscope only gives a two-dimensional view, and the organic sample ...

(Nanowerk News) Until recently, it was widely believed among physicists that it was impossible to compress light below the so-called diffraction limit (see fact box), except when using metal ...

Surface plasmons are collective oscillations of free electrons that occur at the interface between a metal and a dielectric medium, such as air or glass. These oscillations are coupled with ...