The idea of optical computing—the use of photons instead of electrons to perform computational operations—has been around for decades. However, interest has resurged in recent years; the potential for ...

Photons, for centuries both a puzzle and a tool, continue to help scientists illuminate nature at the smallest and largest scales. Photons, the fundamental particles of the electromagnetic field that ...

Photons are particles of light, or waves, or something like that, right? [Mithuna Yoganathan] explains this conundrum in more detail than you probably got in your high school physics class. While ...

A team of researchers from the University of Stuttgart and the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg led by Prof. Stefanie Barz (University of Stuttgart) has demonstrated a source of single photons ...

Research reveals how close human vision comes to sensing the smallest possible unit of light. Here’s why that matters for perception.

Researchers have discovered that superconducting nanowire photon detectors can also be used as highly accurate particle detectors, and they have found the optimal nanowire size for high detection ...