Students in the class ENGRI 1100: "Lasers and Photonics" engage in hands-on learning and build a laser for an assignment.

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 ...

The advent of laser cooling revolutionized the field of atomic physics, transforming atomic clocks and GPS technology and laying the foundations for quantum computing with atoms and ions. In the first ...

The first demonstration of the laser has not only led to a myriad of commercial applications, but fifty years on basic research continues to rejuvenate the fundamental physics of the laser. Looking at ...

Every year, the most prestigious prize in the most fundamental of the natural sciences is given out: the Nobel Prize in Physics. Some recent prizes have literally shook our understanding of the ...

PHYSICS has a reputation for being intimidating. But while the details can be devilish, the basic ideas are often quite simple. On October 2nd Sweden’s Royal Academy of Science awarded the Nobel prize ...

Scientists have created a new class of laser beam that appears to violate long-held laws of light physics. These new beams, which the team calls “spacetime wave packets,” follow different rules of ...