Imagine walking through a field on a cloudless day when you suddenly hear the 130-decibel roar of a fighter jet. But you can’t spot the jet, or even tell which direction the sound is coming from.

A tiny, levitated bead is at the core of an unprecedentedly bright laser that shoots particles of sound instead of light. Just as a ray of light is made up of many particles called photons, sound ...

Sound idea: laser light passes between a ultrasound transducer-reflector array that creates a Bragg grating of air. The laser beam interacts with this grating and is deflected without travelling ...