{"id":228231,"date":"2026-01-02T17:06:44","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T23:06:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/scientists-outline-how-to-control-light-at-the-atomic-scale-using-polaritons"},"modified":"2026-01-02T17:06:44","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T23:06:44","slug":"scientists-outline-how-to-control-light-at-the-atomic-scale-using-polaritons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/scientists-outline-how-to-control-light-at-the-atomic-scale-using-polaritons","title":{"rendered":"Scientists outline how to control light at the atomic scale using polaritons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-outline-how-to-control-light-at-the-atomic-scale-using-polaritons.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Controlling light at dimensions thousands of times smaller than the thickness of a human hair is one of the pillars of modern nanotechnology.<\/p>\n<p>An international team led by the Quantum Nano-Optics Group of the University of Oviedo and the Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology Research Center (CINN\/Principalty of Asturias-CSIC) has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41565-025-02039-3\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> a review article in <i>Nature Nanotechnology<\/i> detailing how to manipulate fundamental optical phenomena when light couples to matter in atomically thin materials.<\/p>\n<p>The study focuses on polaritons, hybrid quasiparticles that emerge when light and matter interact intensely. By using low-symmetry materials, known as <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2024-01-interaction-broken-symmetry-polaritons.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">van der Waals materials<\/a>, light ceases to propagate in a conventional way and instead travels along specific directions, a characteristic that gives rise to phenomena that challenge conventional optics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Controlling light at dimensions thousands of times smaller than the thickness of a human hair is one of the pillars of modern nanotechnology. An international team led by the Quantum Nano-Optics Group of the University of Oviedo and the Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology Research Center (CINN\/Principalty of Asturias-CSIC) has published a review article in Nature Nanotechnology [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nanotechnology","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}