Today I would like to present the turbine-powered optical isolator, a steampunk-sounding bit of hardware that only allows light to pass in one direction. That, I must admit, is a sentence I never ...

Researchers fabricated an optical element that uses a forest of tiny, antenna-like nanorods, seen here, that together create a metamaterial able to control the spin of light. The metamaterial nanorods ...

Light can generate an electrical current in semiconductor materials. This is how solar cells generate electricity from sunlight and how smart phone cameras can take photographs. To collect the ...

Polarized light waves spin clockwise or counterclockwise as they travel, with one direction behaving differently than the other as it interacts with molecules. This directionality, called chirality or ...