Airy beam: When an ordinary beam of neutrons strikes the team’s silicon grating, the millions of scored lines on the grating convert the neutrons into an Airy beam with a wavefront that travels along ...

This calculated diffraction image shows how forked diffraction gratings shape the atoms' wave function into a vortex. (Courtesy: Science/AAAS) A wave-like property previously only seen in beams of ...

In a physics first, a team including scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has created a way to make beams of neutrons travel in curves. These Airy beams (named for ...

Scientists may have discovered how to create a real-life tractor beam using electromagnetic radiation that can draw particles toward it. The result is something very akin to the tractor beam seen in ...

The key innovation of our propulsion concept is the unique coupling of a neutral particle beam with a laser beam, a scheme which nearly eliminates thermal expansion and diffraction during beam ...

This animation shows how a hypothetical future mission might eventually employ ‘tractor beam’ technology. (Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Conceptual Image Lab) Tractor beams — the ability ...

This animation shows how a hypothetical future mission might eventually employ ‘tractor beam’ technology. (Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Conceptual Image Lab) Tractor beams — the ability ...