laser tagged posts

A laser can draw superconductivity at the nanoscale

This article has been the inside cover of Adv. Funct. Mater. 78/2026
This article was featured on the inside cover of Adv. Funct. Mater. 78/2026. Credit: Biancardi et al. (2026). Available in Advanced Functional Materials, 36(78)

Researchers from ICMAB-CSIC, the Politecnico di Milano and Université de Liège have adapted a direct laser writing technique that allows them to “draw” superconducting properties in a material. The result is a new way to locally program the behavior of a superconductor, tuning it from a fully superconducting state to an insulating one with extraordinary precision.

High-temperature superconductors (HTSC) are materials that can conduct electricity without resistance at higher temperatures than conventional superconductors...

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Researchers develop a Laser that produces the Strongest Ultra-Short Laser Pulses to date

A peek inside the record-breaking laser. The image shows the round amplifier disk, through which the laser beam passes several times (bright spot at the centre). (Image: Moritz Seidel / ETH Zurich)

The word laser usually conjures up an image of a strongly concentrated and continuous light beam. Lasers that produce such light are, in fact, very common and useful. However, science and industry often also require very short and strong pulses of laser light.

These pulses can be used to machine materials or to create high harmonic frequencies up to X-rays, which can help to make extremely fast processes in the attosecond range (a billionth of a billionth of a second) visible.

A team of researchers at ETH Zurich led by Ursula Keller, professor at the Institute for Quantum Electronics,...

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New Maser in a ‘Shoebox’ Promises Portable Precision

The new 'shoebox' maser in operation

Researchers in Imperial College London’s Department of Materials have developed a new portable maser that can fit the size of a shoebox.

Imperial College London pioneered the discovery of room-temperature solid-state masers in 2012, highlighting their ability to amplify extremely faint electrical signals and demonstrate high-frequency stability. This was a significant discovery because microwave signals can pass through the Earth’s atmosphere more easily than other wavelengths of light. Additionally, microwaves have the capability to penetrate through the human body, a feat not achievable by lasers.

Masers have extensive applications in telecommunications systems—everything from mobile phone networks to satellite navigation systems...

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Quantum light source goes fully On-Chip, bringing Scalability to the Quantum Cloud

Quantum light source goes fully on-chip, bringing scalability to the quantum cloud
Artistic illustration of the chip-integrated quantum light source for the generation of entangled photons. Credit: Raktim Haldar/Michael Kues

An international team of researchers from Leibniz University Hannover (Germany), the University of Twente (Netherlands), and the start-up company QuiX Quantum has presented an entangled quantum light source fully integrated for the first time on a chip. The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Photonics.

“Our breakthrough allowed us to shrink the source size by a factor of more than 1,000, allowing reproducibility, stability over a longer time, scaling, and potentially mass-production. All these characteristics are required for real-world applications such as quantum processors,” says Prof. Dr...

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