Today, astronomers seek to observe the faintest and most distant objects possible. Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs), with apertures in the order of several dozen meters, are the next generation ...

Key applications include space research, EUV lithography for semiconductor manufacturing, and nuclear fusion research ...

Diffraction gratings are curious things. Score a series of equally spaced tiny lines in a surface, and it will cause reflected or transmitted light to bend and separate into its component wavelengths.

Here’s a great picture from [Jelly & Marshmallows] that shows off the wild effects of melted chocolate poured onto a diffraction grating. A diffraction grating is a kind of optical component whose ...

A variety of ultrathin nanomechanical diffraction gratings that have been fashioned from the “wonder material” graphene have been created by an international team of researchers. The team wanted to ...

Editor's Note: To view a PDF version of the article, Click Here. The commercial introduction of wafer-based, nanofabrication techniques now makes it possible to create a new class of optical ...

Visual demonstration of the performance of the diffraction grating. The zeroth order transmission refers to light that goes straight through the grating without undergoing diffraction (which should be ...

A device that breaks up an electromagnetic wave into its different frequencies (wavelengths) by scattering them at different angles. For example, a series of thousands of scored lines in a glass plate ...

Using a novel method, beams of laser light can be deflected using air alone. An invisible grating made only of air is not only immune to damage from the laser light, but it also preserves the original ...