Ordinarily, light waves pass through each other without any trouble. But when quantum mechanics is involved, something strange happens: photons can interact through the creation of virtual particles ...

When you shine a flashlight into a glass of water, the beam bends. That simple observation, familiar since ancient times, hides one of the oldest puzzles in physics: what really happens to the ...

Negative pressure is a rare and challenging-to-detect phenomenon in physics. Using liquid-filled optical fibers and sound waves, researchers have now discovered a new method to measure it. In ...

We are surrounded by waves. tiny vibrational waves transport sound to our ears. Light waves stimulate the retinas of our eyes. Electromagnetic waves bring radio, television and endless streaming ...

Researchers have used a 350-year-old theorem to better understand the strange nature of light. The team took a theorem used for describing pendulums and substituted the brightness of light in for what ...

By miniaturizing THz spectroscopy to a chip-scale platform, James McIver’s lab has uncovered a promising new method for controlling quantum materials. Under certain conditions, two-dimensional (2D) ...