When a dense sheet of electrons is accelerated to almost the speed of light, it acts as a reflective surface. Such a “plasma mirror” can be used to manipulate light. Now an international team of physicists from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, LMU Munich, and Umeå University in Sweden have characterized this plasma-mirror…
Weyl Fermions See the Light
Researchers from the Theory Department of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg and North Carolina State University in the U.S. have demonstrated that the long-sought magnetic Weyl semi-metallic state can be induced by ultrafast laser pulses in a three-dimensional class of magnetic materials dubbed pyrochlore iridates. Their results,…
New X-ray Laser Publishes First Results
With the publication of the first experimental measurements performed at the facility, the European X-ray Free-Electron Laser (EuXFEL) has passed another critical milestone since its launch in September 2017. It is the first of a “next generation” of XFELs that offer much more rapid data collection than was possible before. As the EuXFEL delivers X-ray…
Lasers Hide Under Nanostructured Invisibility Cloaks
Most lenses, objectives, eyeglass lenses, and lasers come with an anti-reflective coating. Unfortunately, this coating works optimally only within a narrow wavelength range. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart have now introduced an alternative technology. Instead of coating a surface, they manipulate the surface itself. By comparison with conventional procedures,…