Volume 18 Issue 3, March 2024

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.

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.

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

By combining engineered dispersion and chirped quasi-phase matching in multisegment nanophotonic thin-film lithium niobate waveguides, the generation of gap-free frequency comb spanning from 330 to 2,400 nm can be realized with only 90 pJ of pulse energy at 1,550 nm.

Localization of light is observed in photonic quasicrystals with various orders of rotational symmetry.

Exploiting the signal correlation between multiple quantum sensors enables measuring overlapping signals from multiple targets, as demonstrated by imaging point defects in a diamond with an accuracy of 1.7 nm.

Silver telluride quantum dots are employed in shortwave-infrared photodetectors and in monolithically integrated imagers that are free from toxic heavy metals and fully solution processable.

Using programmable integrated photonics to generate a higher-order free-space structured light beam promises lossless and reconfigurable control of the spatial distribution of light’s amplitude and phase with very short switching times.

Ammonium bromide is shown to passivate deep traps on FAPbBr₃ surfaces, improving the charge collection efficiency to near unity in perovskite gamma-ray devices. The approach yielded tenfold improvements in dark current, and the energy resolution of ¹³⁷Cs spectra acquired using FAPbBr₃ detectors was improved from 5.7% to 1.7%.

A skyrmion is a topologically stable field configuration. A non-local skyrmion, which has been hitherto elusive in condensed-matter physics, is realized by using entangled photons with a non-trivial topology. The connection between the notions of topology and entanglement is investigated, revealing topological invariance even when entanglement is fragile.

Frequency-modulated terahertz continuous waves are generated from Josephson junctions included in a cuprate superconductor. When 3 GHz sinusoidal waves were superimposed on 840–890 GHz carrier waves, the modulation bandwidth reached 40 GHz when a Josephson plasma emission was utilized.

Single-shot angle-resolved Brillouin light scattering microscopy enables spatiotemporal mapping of mechanical anisotropy in living cells with a spatial resolution below 2 µm and precision in the Brillouin frequency shift of 10 MHz.

Wavelength-scale, low-threshold, vortex and anti-vortex nanolasers with topological charges in an optical cavity that is formed by a topological disclination are demonstrated, paving a way towards the development of ultra-small light sources with quantized vector vortex states attractive for optical communication systems.

Photonic crystal microring resonators with a periodic corrugation inscribed along the resonator’s circumference allow programmable synthetic reflection for self-injection-locked microcombs and their operation exclusively in the single-soliton regime.