Physicists from Trinity College Dublin believe new insights into the behavior of light may offer a new means of solving one of science’s oldest challenges—how to turn heat into useful energy.

Their theoretical leap forwards, which will now be tested in the lab, could influence the development of specialized devices that would ultimately increase the amount of energy we can capture from sunlight (and lamps and LEDs) and then repurpose to perform useful tasks.

The work has just been published in the journal, Physical Review A.