Princeton Physicists Design Light-Twisting Plasma Chamber

It was my first day at the cyclotron, and I stood in an underground lab area that smelled like sawdust and solder, sectioned off behind the heavy black vinyl of a laser safety curtain. I squinted at the chunky piece of glass held delicately between my fingers--the lab chief had called it a quarter wave plate. From certain angles, its translucent surface gleamed like a tinted mirror, reflecting a bizarrely yellow-green hued world."...and it makes the photons...circular?" I asked, feeling a little...