News tagged with light beams

Physicists build highly efficient 'no-waste' laser

A team of University of California, San Diego researchers has built the smallest room-temperature nanolaser to date, as well as an even more startling device: a highly efficient, "thresholdless" laser that ...

Physics / General Physics

created Feb 08, 2012 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (20) | comments 5 | with audio podcast

ESO team succeeds in linking telescopes at Paranal Observatory into giant VLT

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers working as part of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) at the Cerra Paranal Mountain Observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile, have succeeded in virtually connecting all ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Feb 06, 2012 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (18) | comments 2 | with audio podcast report

Researchers at SLAC test collider closer to creating fully coherent X-rays

(PhysOrg.com) -- Many advanced laser technologies, such as laser spectroscopy, that use precise wavelengths of infrared, visible or ultraviolet laser light could benefit from using X-ray light as well. But ...

Physics / General Physics

created Feb 01, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Ultra-fast photodetector and terahertz generator

Photodetectors made from graphene can process and conduct light signals as well as electric signals extremely fast. Within picoseconds the optical stimulation of graphene generates a photocurrent. Until now, ...

Nanotechnology / Nanophysics

created Jan 31, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (9) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Flipping an egg carton of light traps giant atoms

(PhysOrg.com) -- In an egg carton of laser light, University of Michigan physicists can trap giant Rydberg atoms with up to 90 percent efficiency, an achievement that could advance quantum computing and terahertz ...

Physics / General Physics

created Dec 23, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 7 | with audio podcast

Nanometer-scale growth of cone cells tracked in living human eye

Humans see color thanks to cone cells, specialized light-sensing neurons located in the retina along the inner surface of the eyeball. The actual light-sensing section of these cells is called the outer segment, which is ...

Physics / Optics & Photonics

created Dec 20, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 15

U of Toronto experiment named top breakthrough of 2011 by Physics World

Aephraim Steinberg and colleagues at the Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control at the University of Toronto had the top physics breakthrough of the year according to Physics World magazine.

Physics / General Physics

created Dec 16, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (6) | comments 19

A smarter way to make ultraviolet light beams

Existing coherent ultraviolet light sources are power hungry, bulky and expensive. University of Michigan researchers have found a better way to build compact ultraviolet sources with low power consumption ...

Physics / Optics & Photonics

created Nov 29, 2011 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (6) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

A serendipitous gravitational lens

(PhysOrg.com) -- The path traveled by a light beam will bend in the presence of matter. This remarkable prediction, reached by Einstein in his theory of general relativity, was confirmed by observations of ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Nov 21, 2011 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (6) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

Switching light on and off - with photons

(PhysOrg.com) -- Cornell researchers have demonstrated that the passage of a light beam through an optical fiber can be controlled by just a few photons of another light beam.

Physics / Optics & Photonics

created Nov 09, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (5) | comments 6 | with audio podcast

Millisecond pulsar in spin mode

Astronomers have tracked down the first gamma-ray pulsar in a globular cluster of stars. It is around 27,000 light years away and thus also holds the distance record in this class of objects. Moreover, its ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Nov 03, 2011 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (5) | comments 8 | with audio podcast

NASA studying ways to make 'tractor beams' a reality

Tractor beams -- the ability to trap and move objects using laser light -- are the stuff of science fiction, but a team of NASA scientists has won funding to study the concept for remotely capturing planetary ...

Physics / General Physics

created Oct 31, 2011 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (21) | comments 38 | with audio podcast

Elimination of detrimental cross-talks in single-photon detectors pushes quantum optics to new limits

Light and electric current can both be used for computing, albeit with key differences. Whereas conventional computers do logic through the movement of electrons, newer and faster computers called quantum ...

Physics / Optics & Photonics

created Oct 28, 2011 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (3) | comments 0

Scientists take fresh look at 'faster-than-light' experiment

Scientists who threw down the gauntlet to physics by reporting particles that broke the Universe's speed limit said on Friday they were revisiting their contested experiment.

Physics / General Physics

created Oct 28, 2011 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (22) | comments 146

Erasing history? Temporal cloaks adjust light's throttle to hide an event in time

Researchers from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., have demonstrated for the first time that it's possible to cloak a singular event in time, creating what has been described as a "history editor." In a feat of Einstein-inspired ...

Physics / Optics & Photonics

created Oct 12, 2011 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (15) | comments 14 | with audio podcast