Under the right conditions, a chaotic mess of laser light can spontaneously self-organize into a highly focused “pencil beam.” This schematic shows the pencil beam formation mechanism. CAMBRIDGE, MA - ...

Most laser sources produce Gaussian beams that diverge as they propagate. This natural spreading limits their effectiveness in applications that require light to remain concentrated over long ...

MIT researchers discovered a paradoxical phenomenon in optical physics that could enable a new bioimaging method that's faster and higher-resolution than existing technology. They discovered that, ...

For more than half a century, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has been built on the assumption that if aliens exist and try to communicate, their signals will be faint, scattered, and ...