A tiny silica bead, just 100 nanometers across, sits suspended in a vacuum and vibrates under the grip of laser light. Those ...

A group of scientists created "slits" in time, allowing them to send light through the slits in a twist on an experiment first run over 200 years ago. In the original experiment, scientists sent light ...

Ultrafast lasers tracked plasma formation and ionization in copper with picosecond precision. Results show rapid ion growth ...

Scientists at the University of Oxford have unveiled a pioneering method for capturing the full structure of ultra-intense laser pulses in a single measurement. The breakthrough, published in close ...

For the first time, a quantum radiation reaction in strong electromagnetic fields has been demonstrated experimentally by allowing electrons to collide with an extremely intense and powerful laser ...

A school gym-sized facility tucked away at the University of Michigan is quietly pushing the boundaries of what lasers can do. Known as ZEUS—short for Zettawatt Equivalent Ultrashort laser pulse ...

The most powerful laser in the U.S. just fired up to full strength for its first official experiment—and it’s an absolute beast. Reading time 3 minutes The ZEUS laser, tucked away (as much as a giant ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American It wasn’t so long ago that I was in graduate ...