Tool can be used in a variety of technical applications that normally demand far more expensive laser or arc lamp light

Physicists have wondered in recent years if they could control how atoms interact using light. Now they know that they can. 

For the first time, researchers demonstrate a wave matter technique that could cool molecules

NASA has been investigating features on the lunar landscape that may be "skylights," or openings to larger caves below the moon’s surface

A space-based system that relies on lasers to generate and deliver energy to spacecraft has won a University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) professor a U.S. patent and could become a first-line defense against asteroids on a collision course with Earth.

A simulated flip from metal to insulator might be used to encode information.

Since lasers were invented in 1960, they have penetrated countless scientific, industrial and recreational fields: from eye surgery to DVD players, from cutting steel to triggering ignition in missile stages.

New technique developed at Brookhaven Lab makes self-assembly 1,000 times faster and could be used for industrial-scale solar panels and electronics.

Light can come in many frequencies, only a small fraction of which can be seen by humans. Between the invisible low-frequency radio waves used by cell phones and the high frequencies associated with infrared light lies a fairly wide swath of the electromagnetic spectrum occupied by what are called terahertz, or sometimes submillimeter, waves. Exploitation of these waves could lead to many new applications in fields ranging from medical imaging to astronomy, but terahertz waves have proven tricky to produce and study in the laboratory. Now, Caltech chemists have created a device that generates and detects terahertz waves over a wide spectral range with extreme precision, allowing it to be used as an unparalleled tool for measuring terahertz waves.

Take a material that is a focus of interest in the quest for advanced solar cells. Discover a "freshman chemistry level" technique for growing that material into high-efficiency, ultra-small lasers. The result, disclosed today (Monday, April 13) in Nature Materials, is a shortcut to lasers that are extremely efficient and able to create many colors of light.