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Most space missions rely on chemical rockets for propulsion. Rockets must carry fuel, which increases spacecraft mass and limits their speed and travel distance. For decades, researchers have explored light sails as an alternative. These devices use radiation pressure—the force exerted when light reflects from a surface—to generate thrust. When driven by a powerful laser, a light sail can accelerate continuously without onboard propellant, enabling faster travel across the so

Nonreciprocal interactions between light and matter lie at the heart of many exotic physical phenomena, from magnet-free optical isolation to axion-inspired electrodynamics. One particularly intriguing example is the Tellegen effect, a nonreciprocal magnetoelectric coupling predicted more than 75 years ago but long considered weak and negligible at optical frequencies. “In natural materials, the optical Tellegen effect is extraordinarily weak, making it challenging to observe

An unexpected discovery in a Harvard lab has led to a breakthrough insight into choosing an unconventional material, silica, to make optical metasurfaces – ultra-thin, flat structures that control light at the nanoscale and are already replacing traditional optical devices like lenses and mirrors. A team from Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and collaborators at the University of Lisbon has found that in some cases, silica — the fundamental

In a new Nature Physics study, researchers created particle-like so-called “vortex knots” inside chiral nematic liquid crystals, a twisted fluid similar to those used in LCD screens. For the first time, these knots are stable and could be reversibly switched between different knotted forms, using electric pulses to fuse and split them.

Researchers from TU Delft and Radboud University have discovered that the two-dimensional ferroelectric material CuInP₂S₆ (‘CIPS’) can be used to control the pathway and properties of blue and ultraviolet light like no other material can. With ultraviolet light being the workhorse of advanced chipmaking, high-resolution microscopy and next-generation optical communication technologies, improving the on-chip control over such light is vital. As the researchers describe in the

On the one hand, pixels ranging in size from 100 to 200 nanometres form the foundation for ultra-high-resolution screens that could display razor-sharp images in glasses worn close to the eye, for example. In order to illustrate this, Shih's team of researchers displayed the ETH Zurich logo. This ETH logo consists of 2,800 nano-OLEDs and is similar in size to a human cell, with each of its pixels measuring around 200 nanometres (0.2 micrometres). The smallest pixels developed