Volume 10 Issue 11, November 2016

Radiation pressure is not the only way to push or pull matter and drive light–matter interactions. Optomechanical devices can now be driven thermoelastically and amplification with acoustic-laser-like behaviour has been observed.

A new method of stimulating crystal growth by laser light could enhance the way we make materials.

The X-ray free-electron laser at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in the US can now generate multicolour X-ray pulses with unprecedented brightness using the fresh-slice technique. The development opens the way to new forms of spectroscopy.

Optical sensing of individual ions in solution is made possible by combining a macroscopic dielectric photonic cavity with a nanoscale metal resonator. The approach provides a platform for interrogating single-ion binding events with metal surfaces.

Perovskite quantum wells yield highly efficient LEDs spanning the visible and near-infrared.

An epi-illumination system based on microlens arrays enables field-independent imaging of multiple cells with nanoscale resolution and large field of views.

Coherent mechanical oscillations are optically driven on a metamaterial absorber that has a voltage-tunable Fano resonance. Inversely, optical damping of the mechanical resonance is also achieved.

Non-thermal ultrafast switching of the magnetization in TmFeO₃ is demonstrated. Few-cycle terahertz pulses modify the magnetic anisotropy of the ordered Fe³⁺ spins and trigger nonlinear excitation of the amplitude of spin oscillations.

Finely tunable microring laser exploits integrated capacitive structure.

The protein crystal growth mechanism can be changed from planar 2D nucleation growth to spiral growth by femtosecond laser ablation. By using this method, the growth rate of a hen egg-white lysozyme crystal increases from 0.3 µm per day to 3.4 µm per day.

Single photons are generated from electrically driven semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes embedded in a photonic circuit. Pronounced antibunching is observed when photon correlation is measured at cryogenic temperatures.

Single zinc and mecury ions are optically detected in solution by detuning of metal nanorod resonators coupled to the whispering gallery mode of a dielectric cavity.

A terahertz (THz) optical single-sideband modulator (OSSB) for direct conversion of free-space THz electromagnetic radiation to THz optical modulations is realized. The THz OSSB operates in the 0.3–1.0 THz range without any frequency-dependent tuning.

A new scheme for multicolour X-ray free-electron lasers at soft X-ray wavelengths is proposed. The scheme significantly improves two-colour pulse generation and makes possible the first demonstration of three-colour pulse generation.