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Volume 4 Issue 5, May 2010

The Yagi-Uda antenna is an iconic design in the field of radiowave transmission and detection. Scientists in Japan have now made a nanoscale equivalent from an array of gold nanorods that operates with visible light.

Cover design by Tom Wilson.

Letter by Kosako et al.

Editorial

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Commentary

  • Could optical technology offer a solution to the heat generation and bandwidth limitations that the computing industry is starting to face? The benefits of energy-efficient passive components, low crosstalk and parallel processing suggest that the answer may be yes.

    • H. John Caulfield
    • Shlomi Dolev
    Commentary
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Research Highlights

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News & Views

  • The demonstration of a Yagi–Uda nano-antenna that operates at visible wavelengths gives hope for a convenient means of directing radiation patterns from nanoscale light sources such as single molecules and quantum dots.

    • Geoffroy Lerosey
    News & Views
  • The use of a fabrication scheme for controlling the symmetry, uniformity and location of quantum dots has resulted in a superior source of entangled photon pairs.

    • David Gershoni
    News & Views
  • A new femtosecond fibre laser design combines two distinct regimes of nonlinear dynamic attraction within a single cavity to yield robust and low-noise performance.

    • John M. Dudley
    News & Views
  • The optics of disordered materials is rich and full of surprises. Researchers have now found a new form of stochastic resonance in which an image beam is resonantly amplified by noise.

    • Diederik S. Wiersma
    News & Views
  • A scheme for polishing glass to an angstrom-scale surface quality and an all-optical pH measurement technique were just two of the elegant ideas presented at this year's spring meeting of the Japan Society of Applied Physics.

    • Noriaki Horiuchi
    News & Views
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Editorial

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Business News

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Research Highlights

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Profile

  • The initial concept of the laser was pioneered at Bell Labs, as were many other technologies that are fundamental to the photonics industry. Nadya Anscombe finds out how the company has changed in recent years and what technologies are being researched at Bell Labs today.

    • Nadya Anscombe
    Profile
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Industry Perspective

  • The Nd:YAG was one of the first ever industrial lasers, and even today it still has many advantages over other laser technologies. Competition from newer laser technologies, however, has made its evolution critical to its survival.

    • Paul Seiler
    • Klaus Wallmeroth
    • Kurt Mann
    Industry Perspective
  • The excimer laser is synonymous with precision. Today it is enabling the production of integrated circuits and nextgeneration displays, as well as new breakthroughs in eye surgery.

    • Ralph Delmdahl
    Industry Perspective
  • The semiconductor laser has revolutionized the way the world communicates, and it is continuously evolving with our ever-increasing demand for higher bandwidths.

    • Ed Murphy
    Industry Perspective
  • When the Ti:Sapphire laser was first invented, it took the research community by storm. Today, it has an important role in imaging, spectroscopy and many other applications.

    • Julien Klein
    • James D. Kafka
    Industry Perspective
  • With its high wall-plug efficiency and record-breaking power output, the fibre laser has made the use of lasers in manufacturing more acceptable and cost-effective.

    • Bill Shiner
    Industry Perspective
  • Since their invention, quantum cascade lasers have made considerable progress in terms of their wavelength range and efficiency. Today, they have important applications in environmental science, process control and medical diagnostics.

    • Antoine Müller
    • Jérôme Faist
    Industry Perspective
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Product Highlights

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Interview

  • Nadya Anscombe talks to Charles Townes, Nobel Prize winner and inventor of the maser, the forerunner to the laser, to find out how the invention of the laser came about and how he struggled to convince people of its importance.

    • Nadya Anscombe
    Interview
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Letter

  • A graphene-based photodetector with unprecedented photoresponsivity and the ability to perform error-free detection of 10 Gbit s−1s data streams is demonstrated. The results suggest that graphene-based photonic devices have a bright future in telecommunications and other optical applications.

    • Thomas Mueller
    • Fengnian Xia
    • Phaedon Avouris
    Letter
  • Entangled photons are efficiently generated from highly symmetric, site-controlled InGaAs/GaAs quantum dots grown in inverted pyramids. Fine-structure splitting of the intermediate exciton level is suppressed without the application of electric, magnetic or strain fields. Polarization entanglement is demonstrated by measurements of the two-photon density matrix and the confirmation of several entanglement criteria.

    • A. Mohan
    • M. Felici
    • E. Kapon
    Letter
  • Scientists report a mode-locking regime of an erbium-doped fibre laser in which the laser pulse evolves as a similariton in the gain segment of the cavity and transforms into a soliton in the rest of the cavity. The findings constitute the first observation of amplifier similaritons in a laser cavity and are likely to be applicable to various other nonlinear systems.

    • Bulent Oktem
    • Coşkun Ülgüdür
    • F. Ömer Ilday
    Letter
  • A Yagi–Uda directional antenna — the work horse of radiofrequency communications for more than 60 years — has now been demonstrated at visible wavelengths. An array of appropriately tuned nanoparticles replicate the reflecting and directing elements of the original design. Directional control of radiation from the nano-optical Yagi–Uda antenna was experimentally shown.

    • Terukazu Kosako
    • Yutaka Kadoya
    • Holger F. Hofmann
    Letter
  • Light is scattered out of a focusing beam when an inhomogeneous medium is placed between the lens and the focal plane. Now, scientists experimentally demonstrate that scattering can be exploited to improve, rather than deteriorate, the focusing resolution of a lens by using wavefront shaping to compensate for scattering.

    • I. M. Vellekoop
    • A. Lagendijk
    • A. P. Mosk
    Letter
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Article

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Interview

  • Will graphene optoelectronics be able to displace silicon technology? Thomas Mueller explains that a new design of graphene photodetector is showing great promise.

    • David Pile
    Interview
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Focus

  • Many of us take the invention of the laser for granted.

    Focus
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