Researchers at Stanford University and collaborating institutions have developed a photonic chip that can separate partially coherent light into distinct, mutually incoherent beams, potentially helping cameras, microscopes and telescopes capture information that conventional imaging can miss.

The fingernail-sized device uses a network of light-processing components and an optimisation algorithm to identify and physically separate the underlying coherence modes within a mixed optical field.

The advance, published October 30 in Nature Photonics, demonstrates a capability that researchers had proposed theoretically decades ago but had not previously achieved experimentally.