Scientists have demonstrated that negative refraction can be achieved using atomic arrays -- without the need for artificially manufactured metamaterials. Scientists have long sought to control light ...

Recent experiments that demonstrate the negative refraction of light could bring a heated scientific debate to a close, and give negative-index materials a positive future Figure 1: Negative-index ...

Light energy travels in straight lines and in waves. Light energy travels in straight lines and in waves. When light strikes a plane or a flat surface, it reflects in a manner that is predictable. For ...

When people look into a mirror, they see an image of themselves behind the glass. That image results from light rays encountering the shiny surface and bouncing back, or reflecting, providing a ...

Exploiting a novel technique called phase discontinuity, researchers have induced light rays to behave in a way that defies the centuries-old laws of reflection and refraction. The discovery has led ...

Well, OK, not exactly. A beam of light could pass through air all day long (as long as you have a layer of air 26 billion kilometers long) and not deviate a whit. But if the density of that air ...

Materials scientists can learn a lot about a sample material by shooting lasers at it. With nonlinear optical microscopy—a ...