Anapoles and Flying Donuts

This project represents an exciting opportunity to advance optics and electromagnetism in the first radically new direction to emerge since Hertz, Marconi, Popov and Tesla originally developed technology for generating, detecting, and communicating with transverse electromagnetic waves. We will study the generation, detection, and interaction with matter of "Flying Toroids" - a new type of light pulse never experimentally studied before. The project will also explore their application to new forms of spectroscopy for previously unexplored excitations in matter.