So I've been familiar with the basics of polarization since forever, but I recently realized circular polarization is a mystery to me. I've heard of it in conjunction with eg satellite broadcasts, but ...

Left and right circularly polarized light, where the electromagnetic waves spiral in a clockwise and counterclockwise manner as they travel, plays a crucial role in a wide range of applications, from ...

Light near the surface of ultra-thin optical fibers allows sorting of chiral nanoparticles based on their handedness.

An electromagnetic wave or signal traveling from “here” to “there” has an electrostatic field component that we call its E-field and whose direction we assign as the signal’s polarity. Often, the ...

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are a kind of energetic cosmic radio burst. Though their duration is usually at millisecond scale, their energy (estimated isotropically) reaches 10 ^36 ～10 ^41 erg, ...

(Left) Illustration of the spin of the light field around a gold nanorod coupled to an ultra-thin optical fiber. (Inset) Experimental measurements showing the magnitude of the optical spin (D) ...

A single gold nanorod, far smaller than a wavelength of visible light, can be coaxed into emitting circularly polarized radiation simply by nudging the electron beam that excites it a few nanometers ...

Researchers have successfully transferred the topological quantum Hall and spin Hall effects to a hybrid light-matter system using targeted material design. (Nanowerk News) In a groundbreaking advance ...

This “heterostructure” consists of a stack of multiple different thin films, including a collection of aligned carbon nanotubes with different orientations. Credit: University of Utah This ...