Volume 10 Issue 3, March 2016

Optical control of geometric phase is demonstrated, paving the way towards quantum state control of the nitrogen–vacancy centre in diamond becoming resilient, spatially selective and scalable.

Coherent control joins the nonlinear optical toolbox for free-electron lasers and demonstrates phase control on the attosecond scale.

Ghost imaging allows the creation of images using light that never interacts with the object. Researchers now show that this technique can be applied to reconstruct temporal 'images' of rapidly varying, picosecond signals in telecommunication systems.

A 2016 competition to find the optimum software for 3D single-molecule localization microscopy will help practitioners choose the best tool for the job and spur further developments in the field.

The coherent control of bright excitons in InAs quantum dots is demonstrated by combining heterodyne spectral interferometry with nonlinear multi-wave mixing. The spectro-temporal shape of the coherent emission from InAs quantum dots is manipulated at will.

Direct measurement of the electric field of light in the near-infrared is experimentally demonstrated, showing that careful optical filtering allows the time-resolved detection of electric field oscillations with half-cycle durations as short as 2.1 fs, even with a 5 fs sampling pulse.

Intrinsic Fano interference in a strongly coupled quantum dot/photonic crystal cavity system is controlled to remove most of the coherently scattered light. This result leads to the first experimental observation of the dynamic Mollow triplet.

Scientists demonstrate the temporal analogue of ghost imaging with temporal resolution at the picosecond level. The approach is insensitive to temporal distortion that may occur after the object, and is scalable and can be integrated on-chip.

Using the attosecond streak camera method, researchers measure the temporal characteristics of coherent, spatially separated attosecond pulses generated from the attosecond lighthouse.

Researchers demonstrate correlation of two colours (63.0 and 31.5 nm wavelengths) in a free-electron laser and control photoelectron angular distribution by adjusting phase with 3 attosecond resolution.

A photonic analogue of charge pumping in electronic quantum Hall systems is demonstrated by using a finite 2D square annulus of ring resonators. Topological invariants are investigated by observing the shift of the edge state resonances.

An all-optical manipulation of the Berry phase based on stimulated Raman adiabatic passage is demonstrated in an individual nitrogen–vacancy centre in diamond. The adiabatic control is 100 times faster than that demonstrated before in atomic systems.

Scientists experimentally demonstrate a fully configurable photonic integrated signal processor based on an InP–InGaAs material system by controlling the injection currents to the active components.

Bulk heterojunction perovskite solar cells with a high fill factor are reported.