Extremely Fast and Incredibly Small: Building Circuits with Light

In electrical circuits, current and electromagnetic waves propagate in metal wires. Light is also an electromagnetic wave: however, the wavelength of light is a million times shorter than that of electrical circuits, which changes the way that light interacts with matter. We will build optical circuits using laboratory-grade equipment in order to trap, direct, and control light. We will discover how light is used to push the boundaries of our understanding of the physical world, a notable example being the direct detection of gravitational waves in 2015.