Volume 17 Issue 6, June 2023

Benjamin Palmer from Ben-Gurion University in Israel talks to Nature Photonics about the intriguing optical properties found in molecular crystals in the living world. His latest paper on the topic can be found in this issue.

Multiple scattering from birefringent nanospheres confers brilliant whiteness to parts of the Pacific cleaner shrimp, inspiring new ways to achieve broadband reflection with thin layers of material.

The interaction of atoms with intense squeezed light is affected by the quantum noise of the driving field whereby the quantum noise of the squeezed driving field is imprinted in the emitted high harmonics.

The sensitivity and bandwidth of force measurements are improved by simultaneously probing the motion of two independent mechanical sensors with entangled light.

Progress in high-performance tandem solar cells and quantum cascade laser light sources were highlights of the Japan Society of Applied Physics Spring Meeting.

Joint force measurements with entangled optical probes on two optomechanical sensors are demonstrated. The force sensitivity is improved by 40% in the shot-noise-dominant regime. The sensing bandwidth is improved by 20% in the thermal noise limit.

A multifunctional additive modulates the kinetics of perovskite film growth, enabling inverted perovskite solar cells with 24.8% power conversion efficiency and enhanced thermal stability.

The strong birefringence of liquid crystalline nanospheres in the body of the Pacific cleaner shrimp enables brilliant whiteness by overcoming undesirable optical crowding effects.

Researchers engineer double-tapered optical-fibre arrays and use perovskite nanocrystal substrates for X-ray imaging with a three orders of magnitude output gain and spatial resolution of 22 lp mm⁻¹. Arrayed gamma-ray imaging is also demonstrated using a nanocrystal scintillator film.

Strong-field approximation theory is extended to account for non-classical driving light. This extended theory predicts that ultrafast dynamics of strongly light-driven matter significantly depends on the quantum state of the driving light, particularly on its photon statistics.

We show perovskite X-ray detection at zero-voltage bias with operational device stability exceeding one year. Detection efficiency of 88% and noise-equivalent dose of 90 pGyair are obtained with 18 keV X-rays, allowing single-photon-sensitive, low-dose and energy-resolved X-ray imaging.

An electrically driven on-chip light source of entangled photon pairs is developed by combining an InP gain section and Si₃N₄ microrings. A pair generation rate of 8,200 counts s⁻¹ and a coincidence-to-accidental ratio of more than 80 are achieved around the wavelength of 1,550 nm.

An exact solution for the quantum and private capacities of bosonic dephasing channels is provided. The authors prove that these capacities are equal to the relative entropy of the distribution underlying the channel with respect to the uniform distribution.

Mechano-Raman spectroscopy is demonstrated by using interlayer phonons of atomic-layer vibrators to drive synchronous motion of the metallic plasmonic structure that can then be detected. The modulated light scattering brings out the information that cannot be accessed by optical Raman spectroscopy.

An entanglement filter based on Rydberg atoms is demonstrated. It transmits a desired photonic entangled state and blocks unwanted ones. Near-perfect photonic entanglement can be extracted from a noisy input with arbitrarily low initial fidelity.