In a new study in Nature Professor David Hsieh and his team, including lead author and grad student Junyi Shan, report success at using lasers to dramatically sculpt the properties of materials without the production of any excess damaging heat.

"These tools could let you transform the electronic properties of materials at the flick of a light switch but the technologies have been limited by the problem of the lasers creating too much heat in the materials," says David Hsieh. 

The findings mean that other researchers can now potentially use light to artificially create materials, such as exotic quantum magnets, which would have been otherwise difficult or even impossible to create naturally.
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