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New agentic AI platform accelerates advanced optics design

Stanford engineers debuted a new framework introducing computational tools and self-reflective AI assistants, potentially advancing fields like optical computing and astronomy.

Hyper-realistic holograms, next-generation sensors for autonomous robots, and slim augmented reality glasses are among the applications of metasurfaces, emerging photonic devices constructed from nanoscale building blocks.

Now, Stanford engineers have developed an AI framework that rapidly accelerates metasurface design, with potential widespread technological applications. The framework, called MetaChat, introduces new computational tools and self-reflective AI assistants, enabling rapid solving of optics-related problems. The findings were reported recently in the journal Science Advances.

Near-infrared light enables wireless power and data transfer for medical implants

A new study from a research team at the Center for Wireless Communications Network and Systems (CWC-NS) at the University of Oulu has introduced an approach using near-infrared (NIR) light beyond light therapy to facilitate simultaneous wireless power transfer and communication to electronic implantable medical devices (IMDs). Previously, the research team demonstrated that NIR light for wireless communication is feasible, and now the team made progress by involving wireless charging capabilities using the same light.

Featured in Optics Continuum, the research outlines an approach that promises to enhance the performance and durability of IMDs while providing more secure, safer, more private, and radio interference-free communication. The published paper, authored by Syifaul Fuada, Mariella Särestöniemi, and Marcos Katz at the CWC-NS, has demonstrated research merit as it was designated an Editor’s Pick, highlighting articles of excellent scientific quality and representing the work occurring in a specific field.

The paper is a small part of Syifaul Fuada’s doctoral research. “This is the initial step that could open other ideas to advance the proposed approach,” Fuada says.

Advanced optical model clarifies how complex materials interact with polarized light

Scientists at the University of Oxford demonstrate an approach to interpreting how materials interact with polarized light, which could help advance biomedical imaging and material design.

Their work, reported in Advanced Photonics Nexus, focuses on improving how researchers analyze a key optical property known as the retarder.

In optics, a retarder is a material or device that changes the way light waves are oriented as they pass through. Light waves have an orientation called polarization, and a retarder shifts the phase between different components of that light—essentially delaying one part of the wave compared to another.

Long-hypothesized dynamic transition seen in deeply supercooled water for the first time

In a new study published in Nature Physics, researchers have achieved the first experimental observation of a fragile-to-strong transition in deeply supercooled water, resolving a scientific puzzle that has persisted for nearly three decades.

Water has anomalous properties when cooled below freezing without crystallization. Previous studies have tracked how water’s viscosity changes with temperature, predicting it would diverge to infinity around ~227 K (−46°C), meaning liquid water’s motion would essentially freeze.

However, this prediction conflicted with other known properties of water. As a result, scientists proposed that the viscosity trend must undergo a change at a specific low temperature—the so-called fragile-to-strong transition (FST).

Ultrashort laser pulses catch a snapshot of a ‘molecular handshake’

Liquids and solutions are complex environments—think, for example, of sugar dissolving in water, where each sugar molecule becomes surrounded by a restless crowd of water molecules. Inside living cells, the picture is even more complex: tiny liquid droplets carry proteins or RNA and help organize the cell’s chemistry.

Despite their importance, liquid environments are notoriously difficult to study at the level of individual molecules and electrons. The core challenge is that liquids lack a fixed structure, and the ultrafast interactions between solute and solvent—where chemistry actually happens—have remained largely invisible to scientists.

Psychiatric Disorders Share Far More DNA Than Scientists Realized

A global research team co-led by VCU expert Kenneth Kendler has produced the most comprehensive genetic map so far, identifying five families of disorders that show a high degree of overlap. An international team of scientists is offering new insight into why people are so often affected by more

Scientists Discover How To “Purify” Light, Paving the Way for Faster, More Secure Quantum Technology

University of Iowa scientists have identified a new way to “purify” photons, a development that could improve both the efficiency and security of optical quantum technologies.

The team focused on two persistent problems that stand in the way of producing a reliable stream of single photons, which are essential for photonic quantum computers and secure communication systems. The first issue, known as laser scatter, arises when a laser is aimed at an atom to trigger the release of a photon, the basic unit of light. Although this method successfully generates photons, it can also produce extra, unwanted ones. These additional photons reduce the efficiency of the optical system, similar to how stray electrical currents interfere with electronic circuits.

A second complication comes from the way atoms occasionally respond to laser light. In uncommon cases, an atom releases more than one photon at the same time. When this happens, the precision of the optical circuit suffers because the extra photons disrupt the intended orderly flow of single photons.

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