The spectrum of laser technologies available to hackers has gradually widened from basic gas lasers through CO2 tubes, diode lasers, and now fiber lasers. One of the newer entries is the MOPA laser, ...

One of the coolest things about physics is that the same basic concept can pop up in several seemingly unrelated things: say, a CD, the seed shrimp’s antennae, certain fossils in the Burgess shale, ...

Here’s a great picture from [Jelly & Marshmallows] that shows off the wild effects of melted chocolate poured onto a diffraction grating. A diffraction grating is a kind of optical component whose ...

Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Vol. 250, No. 1263 (Apr. 7, 1959), pp. 439-459 (21 pages) An intricate repetitive fringe pattern, due to the ...

Recent developments in transmission gratings have dramatically increased application areas for transmission gratings. Historically, diffraction gratings have been produced mainly as reflection ...

Scientists have observed “bending” atoms using a crystal grating—an experiment once believed impossible at the high energies required. The authors of a new, non-peer reviewed study detail how the a ...

Editor's Note: To view a PDF version of the article, Click Here. The commercial introduction of wafer-based, nanofabrication techniques now makes it possible to create a new class of optical ...

Researchers in Switzerland have made a popular materials characterization technique accessible to ultrafast X-ray laser light for the first time. The new approach allowed the team to film atomic ...

Using a novel method, beams of laser light can be deflected using air alone. An invisible grating made only of air is not only immune to damage from the laser light, but it also preserves the original ...