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Volume 17 Issue 3, March 2023

Laser-guided lightning

The image shows a lightning strike being guided by a terawatt laser beam that is projected into the sky, near a tower on top of a mountain in Switzerland. The results are the first successful field trial of laser guidance of lightning outside of the lab.

See Houard et al. and Arnold et al.

Image: Xavier Ravinet - UNIGE. Cover Design: Bethany Vukomanovic

Q&A

  • Mordechai (Moti) Segev spoke with Nature Photonics about the fascinating topic of photonic time crystals — materials with a refractive index that is periodically modulated in time on ultrafast timescales — and their inspiring future ahead.

    • Rachel Won

    Collection:

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News & Views

  • A field trial in the Swiss mountains demonstrating that an intense laser beam can guide lightning discharge over tens of metres gives hope for the development of a new form of mobile lightning protection.

    • Cord L. Arnold
    • Clara J. Saraceno
    • M. Teresa Correia de Barros
    News & Views
  • X-ray photons emitted by free electrons travelling in van der Waals materials show energy shifts induced by quantum recoil, thus offering a viable route to generating tailored and tunable single X-ray photons.

    • Nahid Talebi
    News & Views
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Meeting Reports

  • From biophotonics to chiral behaviour, research into organic LEDs is thriving and expanding into new areas.

    • Oliver Graydon
    Meeting Report
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Letters

  • A hyperspectral camera based on a random array of CMOS-compatible Fabry–Pérot filters is demonstrated. The hyperspectral camera exhibits performance comparable with that of a typical RGB camera, with 45% sensitivity to visible light, a spatial resolution of 3 px for 3 dB contrast, and a frame rate of 32.3 fps at VGA resolution.

    • Motoki Yako
    • Yoshikazu Yamaoka
    • Atsushi Ishikawa
    Letter Open Access
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