Can light behave like a whirlwind? It turns out it can—and such "optical tornadoes" have now been created in an extremely ...

Last year marked the 270th anniversary of Benjamin Franklin’s lightning rod — but it’s more than a relic of history. The Franklin rod remains in use today because the simple design exploits some ...

For the first time, a quantum radiation reaction in strong electromagnetic fields has been demonstrated experimentally by ...

A new laser range-finding technique, inspired by quantum physics, that can measure distances under strong solar background ...

Scientists have achieved a historic first using lasers to study electron behaviour, revealing new insights into how light ...

Strong field laser physics investigates the interaction between intense laser pulses and matter, a domain where non-linear phenomena such as multiphoton absorption, tunnelling ionisation, and ...

Scientists have developed a groundbreaking technique called RAVEN that can capture the full complexity of an ultra-intense laser pulse in a single shot—something previously thought nearly impossible.

Thomas White is an associate professor in the Department of Physics, and he’s interested in learning about what’s on the inside of planets and the states of matter it exists in. “The easiest question ...

For 26-year-old Dani, the quote on her ribcage once meant everything. "It was something about freedom and finding yourself," she says with a smile that edges toward embarrassment. "Now I just want to ...

Tailored profiles: The working principle of the new metalaser. The designed geometric phase profile is introduced to the metasurface by rotating the hole in each silicon nitride nanodisk. Then the ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American It wasn’t so long ago that I was in graduate ...