If you want to get the greatest benefit from a beam of light - whether to detect a distant planet or remedy an aberration in the human eye - you need to be able to measure its beam front information.

Figure 2: Atom interferometer and data analysis with it. (a) The China Space Station Atom interferometer. (b) Analysis of the dephasing of shearing fringes. (c) Calibration of the shearing angle.

A super compact interferometer will give scientists an unprecedented ability to fine tune even the quickest pulses of light for a host of applications, and could render traditional instruments for ...