A Molecule of Light and Matter

Using light, atoms can be made to attract each other

04-Aug-2022 - A very special bonding state between atoms has been created in the laboratory for the first time: With a laser beam, atoms can be polarised so that they are positively charged on one side and negatively charged on the other. This makes them attract each other creating a very special bonding ...

A remote control for functional materials

New piece to the elusive puzzle of ultrafast ferroelectricity

11-Mar-2022 - When mid-infrared laser pulses hit certain complex materials, their fundamental properties can change in astonishing ways. They may become magnetic, ferroelectric or begin to carry electrical currents without any resistance. A key ingredient of these phenomena is the efficient excitation of the ...

Laser flashes for polarized electron and positron beams

14-Jun-2019 - Simulations show new methods for efficient polarization: Physicists from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg proposed novel methods for generation of relativistic spin polarized electron and positron beams. Using extensive simulations, they found three different scenarios ...

Broadband achromatic metalens focuses light regardless of polarization

New design doubles the efficiency of the metalens

23-Jan-2019 - We live in a polarized world. No, we aren't talking about politics -- we're talking about light. Much of the light we see and use is partially polarized, meaning its electric field vibrates in specific directions. Lenses designed to work across a range of applications, from phone cameras to ...

Chirality in 'real-time'

Circular dichroism in the deep ultraviolet

11-Jan-2019 - In nature, certain molecules with the same chemical composition, can exist in two different shapes that are mirrors images of each other, much like our hands. This property is known as "chirality" and molecules with different chirality are called enantiomers. Enantiomers can exhibit entirely ...

Light triggers gold in unexpected way

Mechanism to control output of a nanoscale antenna

04-Dec-2018 - Rice University researchers have discovered a fundamentally different form of light-matter interaction in their experiments with gold nanoparticles. They weren't looking for it, but students in the lab of Rice chemist Stephan Link found that exciting the microscopic particles just right produced ...

Meta-surface corrects for chromatic aberrations across all kinds of lenses

Single-layer surface of nanostructures can be incorporated into commercial optical systems

23-Nov-2018 - Today's optical systems -- from smartphone cameras to cutting-edge microscopes -- use technology that hasn't changed much since the mid-1700s. Compound lenses, invented around 1730, correct the chromatic aberrations that cause lenses to focus different wavelengths of light in different spots. ...

Multimodal imaging shows strain can drive chemistry in a photovoltaic material

27-Sep-2018 - A unique combination of imaging tools and atomic-level simulations has allowed a team led by the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory to solve a longstanding debate about the properties of a promising material that can harvest energy from light. The researchers used multimodal ...

Electric polarization in the macroscopic world and electrons moving at atomic scales

New route for understanding and tailoring the properties of ferroelectric materials

30-Aug-2018 - Femtosecond x-ray experiments in combination with a new theoretical approach establish a direct connection between electric properties in the macroscopic world and electron motions on the time and length scale of atoms. The results open a new route for understanding and tailoring the properties ...

Perfect inversion

29-Aug-2018 - Perfectly inverting complex structures is of great technical importance. Researchers at ETH have now succeeded in turning the magnetic and electric structure of materials into their opposites using a single magnetic field pulse. Whenever it gets unpleasantly loud, active noise reduction has been ...