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Physics

Optical physics and communications

What a Frequency Comb Can Do

What a Comb Can Do
What a Comb Can Do
By making a simple measurement, the optical frequency comb has changed science. So what can a comb do? A lot—and the possibilities are constantly expanding. Learn more: https://www.nist.gov/topics/physics/optical-frequency-combs

News and Updates

green laser

Tiny New Lasers Fill a Long-Standing Gap in the Rainbow of Visible-Light Colors, Opening New Applications

Researchers have created orange, yellow and green lasers tiny enough to fit on a chip.
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NIST Researchers Publish Comprehensive Survey on Entanglement Routing in Quantum Networks

NIST Researchers Publish Comprehensive Survey on Entanglement Routing in Quantum Networks

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Johnny Jiménez

NIST Offers New Calibration Service for Wavemeters

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A high-tech laboratory with large black equipment featuring two circular insets showing detailed machinery setups. A computer workstation is in the foreground.

From Pandemics to Pedicures: NIST Rebuilds World-Class UV Calibration System

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View optical physics and communications events

Blog Posts

Isabelle Rivera poses smiling at a computer with two monitors, one showing a spreadsheet and the other multiple file icons.

Reaching for the Stars: My Summer Internship Learning About Spectroscopy in Space and on Earth

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NIST researchers Yoshi Ohno and Jane Li demonstrate different types of lighting in their lab on NIST’s campus in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

The Eye of the Beholder: How Lighting Affects Our Color Perception

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Woman with long dark hair wearing safety goggle stands in front of a table that has a series of lenses on stands

What’s a Physicist? My Summer as a Student Intern at NIST

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View optical physics and communications publications

Projects and Programs

Spectroscopic ellipsometry measurement of a 2D monolayer and the optical property for such a thin layer.

Optical and Optoelectronic Materials Characterization

Ongoing
Today's electronics have reached a point where sheer computation power has combined form and function as the key driver of large consumer markets. The demand for portable and pervasive electronics with greater functionality promises significant changes over the next decades in how society interacts
A chart showing the various sectors served by the Laser Power & Energy Meter calibrations project as of 2025

Laser Power and Energy Meter Calibrations

Ongoing
We serve Industry, DoD, and research institutions by calibrating instruments used to measure the power or energy emitted by a laser, or single photon source. From Single Photons to Kilowatts, Longwave Infrared to Deep Ultraviolet, Free-space and Fiber, we can calibrate your instruments. The chart to
Reflectance of two materials

Extreme ultraviolet optical constants

Ongoing
Measurements of EUV optical constants are often made by measuring the absorption or near-normal-incidence reflectivity, then performing transforms to obtain both the real and imaginary parts of the index. These sorts of measurements have considerable uncertainty because they require knowledge of

Software

Modeled integrated scatter tool (MIST)

The MIST program has been developed to provide users with a general application to model an integrated scattering system. The program performs an integration of

HolograFREE

An electron hologram is a fringe modulated image containing the amplitude and phase information of an electron transparent object. The HolograFREE routines

Tools and Instruments

THz photomixer spectrometer

Continuous-wave terahertz spectrometer

The continuous-wave terahertz spectrometer makes use of two near-infrared lasers. The first laser is a fixed-frequency cw ring Ti:Saph laser operating near 840

Awards