News and Updates

Displaying 1 - 25 of 73

Tiny New Lasers Fill a Long-Standing Gap in the Rainbow of Visible-Light Colors, Opening New Applications

August 28, 2024

Researchers have created orange, yellow and green lasers tiny enough to fit on a chip.

Researchers develop a new type of frequency comb that promises to further boost the accuracy of time keeping

March 14, 2024

Chip-based devices known as frequency combs, which measure the frequency of light waves with unparalleled precision, have revolutionized time keeping, the...

Do the Bump: NIST Scientists Perfect Miniaturized Technique to Generate Precise Wavelengths of Visible Laser Light

November 28, 2023

In research, sometimes the bumpy path proves to be the best one. By creating tiny, periodic bumps in a miniature racetrack for light, researchers at the...

Manipulating Multiple Lasers on a Single Chip: Paving the Way for a New Generation of Quantum Devices

April 10, 2023

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed chip-scale devices for simultaneously manipulating the color, focus...

Improved Chip-Scale Color Conversion Lasers Could Enable Many Next-generation Quantum Devices

March 28, 2023

In two new studies, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have greatly improved the efficiency and power output of a series...

Liam Connolly sits next to a computer monitor and smiles for a photograph.

Spotlight: Quantum Connections for Recent Postdoctoral Researcher Liam G. Connolly

February 10, 2023

The NRC Research Associateship Programs at NIST gave him an opportunity to try something new.

NIST Researchers Develop Miniature Lens for Trapping Atoms

August 1, 2022

Atoms are notoriously difficult to control. They zigzag like fireflies, tunnel out of the strongest containers and jitter even at temperatures near absolute...

$diffraction grating$

‘Exceptional’ Research: Unexpected Light Behavior May Be Harnessed to Improve Optical Communications and Sensors

April 21, 2022

Shine a flashlight into murky pond water and the beam won’t penetrate very far. Absorption and scattering rapidly diminishes the intensity of the light beam...

Inspired by Prehistoric Creatures, NIST Researchers Make Record-Setting Lenses

April 19, 2022

Five hundred million years ago, the oceans teemed with trillions of trilobites — creatures that were distant cousins of horseshoe crabs. All trilobites had a...

Ultraviolet Light Can Clean N95 Masks for Reuse Without Hindering Performance, NIST Study Shows

March 25, 2022

To combat COVID-19 amid supply shortages in 2020, health care facilities across the U.S. resorted to disinfecting personal protective equipment (PPE), such as...

Scientists Greatly Expand the Frequencies Generated by a Miniature Optical Ruler

February 23, 2022

Like a vocal coach who extends the octave range of an opera singer, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have expanded by...

Hybrid Optical Device Captures Light for Longer Periods of Time in a Tiny Region

February 9, 2022

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues have significantly improved the ability of a type of optical...

Strobe Light for 5G: NIST Imaging System Spotlights the Tiny Mechanical Hearts at the Core of Every Cellphone

February 4, 2022

Inside every cellphone lies a tiny mechanical heart, beating several billion times a second. These micromechanical resonators play an essential role in...

A New Harmony: NIST Researchers Develop a Universal Method for Calculating the Resonances of Oscillators

September 15, 2021

The natural, or resonance, frequency at which a simple harmonic oscillator vibrates reveals with exquisite sensitivity the essential properties of the physical...

A Better Way to Measure Acceleration

March 8, 2021

You’re going at the speed limit down a two-lane road when a car barrels out of a driveway on your right. You slam on the brakes, and within a fraction of a...

What Laser Color Do You Like?

October 13, 2020

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland have developed a microchip technology that can convert...

Painting With Light: Novel Nanopillars Precisely Control the Color and Intensity of Transmitted Light

September 4, 2020

By shining white light on a glass slide stippled with millions of tiny titanium dioxide pillars, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and...

cryogenically cooled laser microresonator frequency comb

Comb on a Chip: New Design for ‘Optical Ruler’ Could Revolutionize Clocks, Telescopes, Telecommunications

June 22, 2020

Just as a meter stick with hundreds of tick marks can be used to measure distances with great precision, a device known as a laser frequency comb, with its...

What a Switch! NIST-Led Team Develops Tiny Low-Energy Device to Rapidly Reroute Light in Computer Chips

November 14, 2019

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues have developed an optical switch that routes light from one...

Sculpting Super-Fast Light Pulses: NIST Nanopillars Shape Light Precisely for Practical Applications

May 2, 2019

Imagine being able to shape a pulse of light in any conceivable manner—compressing it, stretching it, splitting it in two, changing its intensity or altering...

Entangling Photons of Different Colors

February 25, 2019

Some of the most advanced communication systems now under development rely on the properties of quantum science to store and transport information. However...

New Device Widens Light Beams by 400 Times, Broadening Possibilities in Science and Technology

November 27, 2018

By using light waves instead of electric current to transmit data, photonic chips—circuits for light—have advanced fundamental research in many areas from...

Through a Prism Brightly: A New Way to Measure the Light-Warping Properties of Hyperbolic Metamaterials

June 18, 2018

Manipulating light in a variety of ways—shrinking its wavelength and allowing it to travel freely in one direction while stopping it cold in another--hyperbolic...

Illustration of sunlight shining on solar panel covered with nanometer-scale beads.

Psst! A Whispering Gallery for Light Boosts Solar Cells

April 13, 2018

Trapping light with an optical version of a whispering gallery, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a...

Cavity coating in flat red layer below blue-green light beam

Plasmons in an Open Box Create Miniature Laser

October 12, 2017

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed the first miniature laser in which the light is guided along the floor of...

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