Photonics Research Laboratory

24/08/2026

ATM. Professorial Lecture of Dr. Myles Zosa. Intense seedless Magnetic fields. Professorial chair is funded by the UP Alumni Association of Wisconsin.

24/07/2026

Jancy being grilled atm.

18/07/2026

Rommil presented their research at the 34th Rarefied Gas Dynamics Conference in University of Queensland St Lucia, Brisbane, Australia.

06/07/2026

Congratulations, Jacob!

06/07/2026

Mag - Idol hunting 👀 in Korea ❌️
Mag-summer school sa GIST ✔️

Goodluck Marc and EJ! Enjoy learning. 🤪

25/06/2026

👏👏👏

RESEARCH| An immediate analogy for our study can be found in a familiar sight: a straw in a glass of water that looks bent. That's because light changes direction when it hits a new material.

Even though it is not a one-to-one correspondence, when a light beam reflects off a surface, the position of the reflected light can deviate from its expected path and position, a subtle effect called the Goos-Hänchen shift.

Our research focused on measuring this small shift in two well-known materials: silicon and gallium arsenide. These materials are important in electronics and optics, but they can be tricky to tell apart if the detecting devices are not sensitive enough because they behave very similarly.

We discovered that by carefully measuring the Goos-Hänchen shift—particularly how much the light beam shifts when it bounces off these materials—we can actually tell the difference between them, even though they look nearly identical to other tests. Even more exciting, we found that this method can help measure not just how much a material shifts the reflected light, but it can also give an insight into how much it absorbs light based on this shift, which is harder to check precisely.

This finding could lead to new, simple ways to identify and test advanced materials in a non-destructive manner. It's like giving scientists a new "ruler" made of light to better understand the materials that power our technology.

Authors: Jared Joshua Operaña (Material Science and Engineering Program, University of the Philippines Diliman), Niña Zambale Simon (National Institute of Physics, University of the Philippines Diliman), and Nathaniel Hermosa (National Institute of Physics, University of the Philippines Diliman)

Published in Optics Letters

Read more: https://ovpaa.up.edu.ph/research/measuring-the-goos-hanchen-shift-distinguishes-silicon-from-gallium-arsenide/

19/06/2026

Some of our posters at the 44th SPP Physics Conference and Annual Meeting .

19/06/2026

Yung mic 🎤 po talaga yung nanalo!

Congratulations to our best boys, EJ, Kal-el (with Dennis), and Mark!

Best Poster one-two-three punch.

This is the 3rd year that a Photonics Research Laboratory poster won the Best Poster award at the Samahang Pisika ng Pilipinas Physics Conference. AND we swept all the awards in our poster session.

So kailan ang bbq? ~ Prof. Garcia

19/06/2026

Mario's first presentation on his new research topic at the SPP Physics conference.