Forty Years of Optical Manipulation
Over the past 40 years, optical manipulation research has deepened our understanding of physics and biology, and it has yielded the optical-tweezers technique that is used across all the sciences.
David McGloin and Jonathan P. Reid
Scatterings
Flat lens zooms fast; filming freezing flies; using standard CMOS tools to fabricate a tiny map of the world.
Yvonne Carts-Powell
Lasers in Communications
Low-cost semiconductor lasers power the shortest networks in the data center and the long-haul links that speed information around the globe. Today, lasers are integrated into photonic circuitry and even optical cables.
Patricia Daukantas
Hermann von Helmholtz: A 19th Century Renaissance Man
Hermann von Helmholtz was many things to many people: physicist, teacher, medical doctor, aesthete and more. He drew on his extensive knowledge of many fields to invent the ophthalmoscope—a device that revolutionized ophthalmology—when he was just 29 years old.
Barry R. Masters
The Promise of Diffractive Waveplates
Diffractive waveplates exhibit the high diffraction efficiency of Bragg gratings in micron-thick material layers.
Sarik R. Nersisyan, Nelson V. Tabiryan, Diane M. Steeves and Brian R. Kimball