A team of University of Illinois researchers at the Micro + Nanotechnology Lab recently applied new theoretical physics concepts to enhance the performance of a well-established semiconductor laser technology. In a paper published in Optica, Electrical & Computer Engineering Professor Kent Choquette and students in his group reported parity-time (PT) symmetry breaking in an electrically injected, room temperature vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) array for the first time.