New research uses optical solitons in lasers to explore naturally-occurring supramolecules

Curtis Menyuk, professor of computer science and electrical engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), has collaborated with a team directed by Philip Russell at the Max-Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPI) in Erlangen, Germany, to gain insight into naturally-occurring molecular systems using optical solitons in lasers. Optical solitons are packets of light that are bound together and move at a constant speed without changing shape. This work, published in Nature Communications, was initiated while Menyuk was a Humboldt Senior Research Fellow in the Russell Division at MPI.