Lasers Hold a Few Hundred Atoms to Create the Smallest Optical Mirror | NextBigFuture.com

Physicists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) have made an optical mirror using only a few hundred identical atoms. They used a new metamaterial made of a single structured layer. few hundred identical atoms. Interfering laser beams hold two layers of atoms in arrays. This has come from an emerging new field of subwavelength quantum optics with ordered atoms. The mirror is the only one of its kind. The new mirror is only several tens of nanometers thin but the reflection can be seen by the human eye. The mirror has a diameter of around seven microns.