Reviews & Analysis

Photonics West 2024 showcases a robust and growing photonics industry, as the field of silicon photonics works towards sustainable growth.

Manipulating extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light is notoriously challenging owing to the lack of efficient light modulators. Quantum materials with properties controllable by light may provide an answer.

Sub-cycle confinement and control of phase transitions in strongly correlated materials are theoretically demonstrated, potentially providing a way to investigate electron dynamics on timescales previously unattainable with these materials.

Holographic waveguides using shallow etching of silicon-on-insulator waveguides makes designing integrated, preset optical vector matrix multiplication computationally tractable and commercially available.

This Review discusses the physics of nonreciprocal radiation and Kirchhoff’s law generalization in the context of nanophotonics-enabled nonreciprocal thermal applications.

An optical fibre-fed superconducting electro-optic modulator with gigahertz bandwidth and attojoule per bit electric power consumption offers a fast, efficient means to connect superconducting circuits to the room temperature environment.

Ultrasound-induced luminescence in trianthracene derivative-based nanoparticles enables tumour imaging and immunological profiling in a variety of in vivo models.

A non-common-path interferometric scheme enables holographic detection of single proteins of mass 90 kDa and estimation of single-protein polarizability.

A common direct-bandgap semiconductor has been found to host optically addressable spins, opening the door to scalable quantum sensor manufacturing.

Chiral materials and related mechanisms are reviewed, with a focus on applications for circularly polarized light-emitting diodes.

The frequency of coherent terahertz waves radiated from a single superconducting emitter can be electronically modulated on a chip with up to 40 GHz bandwidth, paving the way for high-data-rate and ultrafast terahertz wireless communications.

Brillouin light scattering anisotropy microscopy affords single-shot collection of angle-resolved phonon dispersion, enabling the mapping of mechanical anisotropies in living matter with a frequency resolution of 10 MHz and a spatial resolution of 2 µm.

A photonic equivalent to disclination in crystals has been used to produce orbital angular momentum laser light directly on-chip, ushering in compact and efficient twisted-light lasers.

Metasurfaces bring miniaturization and new avenues for the generation, manipulation and measurement of quantum light.

A review of NIR-II fluorescence imaging is presented, with a focus on fluorophores, probes and imaging techniques.

Electrical excitation of a perovskite light-emitting diode is shown to contribute to optical gain, a milestone on the path towards a non-epitaxial laser diode.