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Phase-changing material generates vivid tunable colours

Electrical charge on objects in optical tweezers can be controlled precisely

New technique could shed light on electrification of aerosols

Photograph of the optical-tweezers and a member of the research team

Ten-ion system brings us a step closer to large-scale qubit registers

Each ion is uniquely entangled with a photon

Research headlines

Fluid-based laser scanning technique could improve brain imaging

Beam steering using an electrowetting prism

Large-area triple-junction perovskite solar cell achieves record efficiency

University of Sydney researchers with their perovskite solar cells

Randomly textured lithium niobate gives snapshot spectrometer a boost

Entangled light leads to quantum advantage

Number of measurements required to learn about the behaviour of a complex, noisy quantum system reduced by a factor of 10¹¹

New adaptive optics technology boosts the power of gravitational wave detectors

FROnt Surface Type Irradiator, or FROSTI, will allow future detectors to run at higher laser powers, reducing noise and expanding capabilities

Chip-integrated nanoantenna efficiently harvests light from diamond defects

Nearly all light emitted by nitrogen-vacancy centres can be collected, providing a boost for these room-temperature quantum technology platforms

High-speed 3D microscope improves live imaging of fast biological processes

Multifocus microscope uses 25 tiny cameras to image rapid biological processes over the entire volume of small living organisms

New hollow-core fibres break a 40-year limit on light transmission

Researchers at Microsoft and the University of Southampton create fibres that cut signal loss, boost bandwidth and promise faster, greener communications.

Broadband wireless gets even broader thanks to integrated transmitter

Device can process signals at frequencies ranging from below 1 GHz to more than 100 GHz

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Features

China’s High Energy Photon Source prepares to light up the world

3D model of the High Energy Photon Source (HEPS) synchrotron building

Oculomics: a window to the health of the body

Hands holding a small piece of medical equipment in front of a patient's eye

Rethinking physics: Silvia Vignolini on succeeding at the boundary between disciplines

Explore more in optics and photonics

Fabrication and device performance of Ni0/Ga₂O₃ heterojunction power rectifiers

Join the audience for a live webinar at 6 p.m. GMT/1 p.m EST on 19 November 2025

Discover how NiO/Ga₂O₃ heterojunction rectifiers unlock high-performance power electronics w...

Crainio’s Panicos Kyriacou explains how their light-based instrument can help diagnose brain injury

Panicos Kyriacou talks about the development and uses of Crainio's non-invasive sensor to measure intracranial pressure

Illustration of Crainio's sensor with a sticker attached to a person's head and a box containing the electronics

Optical imaging tool could help diagnose and treat sudden hearing loss

Optical coherence tomography can detect fluid imbalance in the inner ear, which correlates with the severity of a patient’s hearing loss

Deep-blue LEDs get a super-bright, non-toxic boost

A new hybrid copper iodide semiconductor converts nearly all the photoenergy it receives into blue light

Crystals emitting deep-blue light. A scale bar at the bottom indicates that the crystals are millimetre-scale

Laser-driven implosion could produce megatesla magnetic fields

Simulations of improved technique generate fields as strong as those found near neutron stars

Conceptual illustration of bladed microtube implosion, showing how sawtooth-like blades inside the cylindrical target drive strong loop currents (shown as a pinkish swirl) and generate strong magnetic fields (shown as bright yellow loops around the target)

How hot can you make a solid before it melts?

Superheated gold stays solid at temperatures far beyond the predicted "entropy catastrophe"

A laser superheats a sample of gold. The gold is shown as a gold-coloured lattice while the laser is a bright beam of light. A rainbow coming off the lattice represents light being emitted at different wavelengths

New metalaser is a laser researcher’s dream

Nanostructured lasing system creates arbitrarily-shaped wavefronts, making it possible to control laser emission at will

Diagram of the metalaser showing different emission profiles it can produce

New laser-plasma accelerator could soon deliver X-ray pulses

New design is more efficient at driving electrons

Researchers inspect the new laser-driven FEL

Stacked perovskite photodetector outperforms conventional silicon image sensors

New device could lead to sensitive, artefact-free imaging with improved colour fidelity

A palette of colours including blues, greens, reds, yellow, orange, pink, purple and various shades of black, grey and white. It looks a little like a Mondrian artwork

Squid use Bragg reflectors in their skin to change colour

New holotomography measurements reveal that the tuneable optical properties of these cephalopods come from winding columns of platelets in iridescent cells

Images showing the blue, green, yellow, orange and red iridscent colours of squid splotches

Switchable metasurfaces deliver stronger light control

Optimizing the geometric parameters of polymer nanoantenna arrays significantly improves the performance of optical metasurfaces

Dongqing Lin and Magnus Jonsson in the laboratory

New definition of second ticks closer after international optical-clock comparison

Fibre and satellites connections span two continents

Soliton structure protects superfluorescence

New work could help in the development of materials that host exotic coherent quantum states under ambient conditions

Bright light emitted from an orange disc

Single silicon chip processes optical and microwave signals

Researchers create a photonic engine that can manipulate microwave and optical signals and convert the signals between the two domains

Harnessing the power of light for healthcare

Nick Stone discusses some of the many ways in which light can be used for diagnostic and therapeutic applications

Nick Stone and Tami Freeman on stage at the Celebration of Physics

Laser World of Photonics showcases cutting-edge optical innovation

Attendees at this year’s Laser World of Photonics trade show can discover the latest trends in photonics technology, attend workshops and technical presentations, and interact wi...

Tiny laser delivers high-quality, narrowband light for metrology

Laser diode device enables rapid measurement

Quantum effect could tame noisy nanoparticles by rendering them invisible

Theoretical proposal suggests a way of eliminating backaction noise in nanoparticles levitated with light

Illustration showing an orange sphere hovering in space within a dark blue hemispherical curved mirror. A standing light wave, shown in red, reflects from the mirror and a stream of information, represented by 1s and 0s written in a wavelike form, radiates outward

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