Theodore Maiman, who built the first working laser, passed away on 5 May aged 79. Maiman made his breakthrough in 1960 by generating pulses of coherent light from a fingertip-sized lump of ruby ...

Light's shadow: Researchers showed that a laser beam can sometimes act like a solid object and cast a shadow that is visible to the naked eye. In the picture, the shadow appears as the horizontal line ...

The Shanghai Laser Plasma Institute, a research arm of the China Academy of Engineering Physics, was initiated in 1984 and put into operation in 1986. It mainly engages in the research and development ...