In an introductory physics course, there are three big ideas. There is the work-energy principle, the momentum principle and then the angular momentum principle. I'll skip the work-energy principle ...

In a new study published in Nature Physics, scientists have achieved the first experimental observation of phonon angular momentum in chiral crystals. Phonons are the quantized lattice vibrations ...

Phonons are the collective vibrations that move through a solid. They can be thought of as waves traveling across the atomic ...

Optical beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) have attracted growing attention during the last decades, exhibiting disruptive applications in a wide range of fields: particle trapping and ...

Photons can have half-integer values of angular momentum when they are confined to fewer than three dimensions. That is the conclusion of physicists in Ireland, who have revived an experiment first ...

Optical holography is a powerful method for recording and reconstructing complete optical field information, including intensity and phase. It has found extensive applications in various fields, such ...

We live and die by data these days. Data rates and latencies are everything, with data centers and chips designed to maximize communication speeds. The hero in the world of data is the optical fiber.

When a magnetic material is bombarded with short pulses of laser light, it loses its magnetism within femtoseconds (10 –15 seconds). The spin, or angular momentum, of the electrons in the material ...

Introduction You might have seen figure skaters spinning around quickly and then tucking their arms to spin faster—or opening them to spin more slowly. This happens, thanks to a physics concept known ...