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A newly described property related to the "spin" and momentum of light waves suggests potential practical applications in photonic communications and photonic circuits. Scientists already knew that light waves have an electric field that can rotate as they propagate, which is known as the polarization property of light, and that light waves carry momentum in their direction of motion. In new findings, researchers have discovered a "spin-momentum locking," meaning, for example, light waves that spin in a counterclockwise direction can only move forward, and vice versa.

Researchers at Purdue University have created a quantum spin wave for light. This can be a carrier of information for future nanotechnologies but with a unique twist: they only flow in one direction.

Manufacturers frequently use coatings to protect the structural stability of engines or power generators operating at high temperatures. Ceramic shields, however, have not been able to adequately address a critical, performance-limiting factor: heat radiation. A new ceramic coating from Purdue University acts as a kind of thermal antenna, using light-matter oscillations, or polaritrons, to control the direction and electromagnetic spectrum of thermal radiation.

Our research group delivered three presentations at the American Physical Society (APS) March Meeting 2025 in Anaheim, California. The APS March Meeting, a major gathering for the physics community, provided a platform to present our recent work in quantum sensing, materials science, and light...

A paper by Wenbo Sun, titled "Nanophotonic Super-dephasing in Collective Atom-Atom Interactions," has been published in the journal Physical Review Applied. This work reports on the discovery of a phenomenon termed "super-dephasing," which reveals a new mode of collective dephasing within...

Congratulations to Yifan and Chinmay on their paper, “Broadband circularly polarized thermal radiation from magnetic Weyl semimetals” being published in Optical Materials Express. The paper demonstrates that a planar slab made of magnetic Weyl semimetal (a class of topological materials) can emit...

Purdue researchers have developed a “topological circulator” that may improve how information is routed and processed on a chip. Graphene has been the focus of intense research in both academic and industrial settings due to its unique electrical conduction properties. As the thinnest material known...

Ashwin Boddeti, a graduate student with Purdue University’s Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been awarded the Wolf Outstanding Student Paper Competition by Optica (formerly OSA). Established in 2008 to honor Emil Wolf for his many contributions to science and Optica...

Check out contributions from our group at the CLEO Conference. We had a series of exciting talks given by Xueji Wang, Farid Kalhor, and Ashwin Boddeti.

Prof. Barry Bradlyn spoke about the discovery of topological materials as one of the most transformative recent breakthroughs in condensed matter physics, revealing new conceptual surprises in established topics such as the phases of matter and the behavior of electrons in insulators. Most work on...