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Volume 7 Issue 2, February 2013

The cover shows a schematic illustration of a obliquely oriented vertical waveguide formed in a 3D photonic crystal with a stacked stripe structure. This waveguide has enabled the realization of on-demand 3D light guiding in photonic crystals.

Letter p133; News & Views p89

IMAGE: NODA AND ISHIZAKI et al.

COVER DESIGN: TOM WILSON

Editorial

  • Obtaining new insights into yet unexplained phenomena and making the impossible possible are among the main motivations for any scientist. Going beyond limitations is the key challenge.

    Editorial

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Books & Arts

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Research Highlights

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News & Views

  • Using strain to induce a pseudomagnetic field in a photonic lattice at optical frequencies might bring improvements to fields such as photonic crystal fibres, supercontinuum generation and frequency combs.

    • Thomas Lepetit
    News & Views
  • The report of a quantum receiver that can distinguish quadrature-phase-shifted keyed signals with an error rate beyond the standard quantum limit bodes well for improving the performance of coherent optical communication systems.

    • Kenji Tsujino
    News & Views
  • By enlisting help from a robot to assemble precise structures, researchers have guided telecommunications-wavelength light around multiple hairpin turns in a three-dimensional photonic crystal.

    • Peter Bermel
    News & Views
  • A holographic microscope capable of dynamically imaging unstained living cells at resolutions beyond the diffraction limit could prove extremely useful for studying biological cells.

    • Gary Brooker
    News & Views
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Review Article

  • The ability to dynamically image features deep within living organisms, permitting real-time analysis of cellular structure and function, is important for biological science. This Review article discusses multiphoton microscopy capable of such analysis, along with technologies that are pushing the limits of phenomena that can be quantitatively imaged.

    • Erich E. Hoover
    • Jeff A. Squier
    Review Article
  • It's challenging to measure non-repetitive events in real time in the field of instrumentation and measurement. Dispersive Fourier transformation is an emerging method that permits capture of rare events, such as optical rogue waves and rare cancer cells in blood. This Review article covers the principle of dispersive Fourier transformation and its implementation in diverse applications.

    • K. Goda
    • B. Jalali
    Review Article
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Letter

  • By recording digital holograms created from different illumination directions and subsequently processing them in a complex deconvolution scheme, scientists are able to capture details of living biological samples with subwavelength resolution.

    • Yann Cotte
    • Fatih Toy
    • Christian Depeursinge
    Letter
  • Researchers use sideband injection-locked lasers to generate low-noise, high-frequency radio signals that can be tuned over the range of 0.5–110 GHz. This technique is amenable to compact integration and, in principle, operation at even higher frequencies.

    • Garrett J. Schneider
    • Janusz A. Murakowski
    • Dennis W. Prather
    Letter
  • The concept of an optical pulling force, or ‘tractor beam’, has received increasing interest following recent theoretical proposals. Scientists have now experimentally verified this concept and demonstrated that the orientation of the beam's linear polarization strongly influences the behaviour of the object being pulled, in particular the direction of its delivery.

    • O. Brzobohatý
    • V. Karásek
    • P. Zemánek
    Letter
  • Researchers observe Rabi oscillations in a metal structure with a J-aggregate nonlinear medium and coherent energy transfer between excitonic quantum emitters and surface plasmons. The coupling energy is controlled on the 10 fs timescale by varying the exciton density. This work demonstrates the potential of nonlinear ultrafast plasmonics.

    • Parinda Vasa
    • Wei Wang
    • Christoph Lienau
    Letter
  • Researchers demonstrate large cross-phase shifts of 0.3 mrad per photon in a single pass through room-temperature Rb atoms confined to a hollow-core photonic bandgap fibre. The response time of less than 5 ns indicates that phase modulation bandwidths greater than 50 MHz are possible with a highly sensitive atomic-vapour-based scheme.

    • Vivek Venkataraman
    • Kasturi Saha
    • Alexander L. Gaeta
    Letter
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Article

  • Researchers provide tight bounds for the classical information capacity of a Bosonic thermal noise channel. They also compare these limits with the well-known lower bound of the channel and an upper bound first introduced by Holevo and Werner in their seminal work on the subject.

    • Robert König
    • Graeme Smith
    Article
  • Researchers present a quantum receiver based on a novel adaptive measurement scheme and a high-bandwidth, high-detection-efficiency system for single-photon counting. The receiver unconditionally discriminates between four nonorthogonal coherent states with error probabilities 6 dB below the standard quantum limit for a wide range of input powers.

    • F. E. Becerra
    • J. Fan
    • A. Migdall
    Article
  • Magnetic effects are fundamentally weak at optical frequencies. Now, by applying inhomogeneous strain in photonic band structures of a honeycomb lattice of waveguides, scientists show experimentally and theoretically that it is possible to induce a pseudomagnetic field at optical frequencies. The field yields 'photonic Landau levels', which suggests the possibility of achieving greater field enhancements and slow-light effects in aperiodic photonic crystal structures than those available in periodic structures.

    • Mikael C. Rechtsman
    • Julia M. Zeuner
    • Alexander Szameit
    Article
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Interview

  • Strain in photonic structures can induce pseudomagnetic fields and Landau levels. Nature Photonics spoke to Mordechai Segev, Mikael Rechtsman, Alexander Szameit and Julia Zeuner about their unique approach.

    • Rachel Won
    Interview
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