Through the Center for X-Ray Optics, Berkeley Lab and leading semiconductor manufacturers have mutually invested in major new facilities at the Advanced Light Source for advanced extreme-ultraviolet lithography, including clean rooms, wafer processing facilities, and microlithography test tools too costly for individual manufacturers.

Paving the way for fast-as-light, ultra-compact communication systems and optoelectronic devices, Berkeley Lab scientists have developed a technique for steering the curved path of plasmonic Airy beams – combinations of laser light and quasi-particles called surface plasmon polaritons.

Berkeley Lab researchers have fabricated superlenses from perovskite oxides that are ideal for capturing light in the mid-infrared range, opening the door to highly sensitive biomedical detection and imaging. It may also be possible to turn the superlensing effect on/off, opening the door to highly dense data writing and storage.

Berkeley Lab researchers have carried out the first experimental demonstration of GRIN plasmonics, a hybrid technology that opens the door to a wide range of exotic optics, including superfast photonic computers, ultra-powerful optical microscopes, and “invisibility” carpet-cloaking devices.

Berkeley Lab researchers have discovered Möbius symmetry in metamaterials – materials engineered from artificial “atoms” and “molecules.” This phenomenon, never observed in natural materials, could open new avenues for unique applications in quantum electronics and optics.

Some of the most sensitive devices for detecting magnetic fields use light to put a spin on atoms and then measure the spin orientation. Now a team from Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley, and the Vavilov State Optical Institute in Russia has achieved a remarkable technical advance with this kind of magnetometer, an advance that also has potential for improving atomic clocks, quantum memory devices, and a range of other scientific gadgets that depend on measuring spinning atoms with light.

Berkeley researchers have combined the scientific fields of transformation optics and plasmonics to demonstrate that with only moderate modifications of the dielectric component of a metamaterial, the physical space through which light travels can be altered with promising results, such as the creation of a 180 degree bend that won’t alter the energy or properties of a light beam as it makes the U-turn, or a plasmonic version of a Luneburg lens.

Understanding how to create artificial photosynthesis, or tough, flexible high-temperature superconductors, or better solar cells, or a myriad other advances, will only be possible when we have the ability to image electrons by freezing time within a few quintillionths of a second. A leader in attosecond science tells how it’s done.

Berkeley Lab researchers have produced non-toxic nanocrystals that efficiently emit blue light, making them a bright candidate for solid-state lighting. These materials could also play a role in long-term storage of carbon dioxide, a potential means of tempering the effects of global warming.

Studying Einstein’s General Relativity theory and such celestial phenomena as black holes and strange attractors in a laboratory setting may soon be possible using the new breed of artificial optical materials that can bend light in unusual ways.