The light – be it considered a wave or a particle or a ray – must obey the laws of optics. But rules exist to be broken, or at least bent, and as the articles in this special issue illustrate, optics ...

The Nobel Committee on Tuesday awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics to three American physicists who have pioneered the way light has revolutionized telecommunications. The wonders of the ...

Classical physics theories suggest that when two or more electromagnetic waves interfere destructively (i.e., with their electric fields canceling each other out), they cannot interact with matter ...

Photons: In quantum optics, light is treated as a stream of discrete particles called photons.Each photon carries a specific amount of energy determined by its frequency. Quantum States: Quantum ...

Quantum optics describes how discrete units of light, or photons, and matter interact on small scales. The subfield of physics grew from quantum mechanics and came into its own with advances in laser ...

Examples include optical hydrodynamics, in which the propagation of light is described in terms of fluid flow, statistical physics using incoherent light, and quantum optics. The new language allows ...

The 333 notches meant that the angular momentum of the light existed in multiples of 333/2. Furthermore, the light must go around the loop twice before returning to its original electric-field phase.