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Michigan Researchers Create Light-Steered Electron Lighthouse

7/27/2026

Summary

Story summary

University of Michigan physicists built an electron lighthouse that steers a beam using only light.
Yiming Gong devised a fabrication method at the Lurie Nanofabrication Facility to avoid external electric fields.
They steer the beam by rotating the light’s polarization, a technique predicted by John Sipe.
The NSF-funded work published in Physical Review Letters reports a ballistic current and potential uses in quantum sensing, imaging, telecommunications and computing.

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Story summary

University of Michigan physicists built an electron lighthouse that steers a beam using only light.
Yiming Gong devised a fabrication method at the Lurie Nanofabrication Facility to avoid external electric fields.
They steer the beam by rotating the light’s polarization, a technique predicted by John Sipe.
The NSF-funded work published in Physical Review Letters reports a ballistic current and potential uses in quantum sensing, imaging, telecommunications and computing.