Volume 4

  • No. 12 December 2010

    Artist's impression of an extreme frequency upconverter of coherent light that transforms infrared laser light into X-rays. This issue highlights recent developments made in X-ray photonics, with an emphasis on both generation and imaging applications.

    Image courtesy of Richard B. Baxley and Tenio Popmintchev.

    Focus issue on X-rays

    Focus

    X-rays

  • No. 11 November 2010

    Semiconductor wafer featuring optical waveguides together with vapour cells and reservoirs containing rubium atoms. The circuitry makes it possible to perform electromagnetically induced transparency on a chip, gaining unprecedented control over the propagation speed of light.

    Cover design by Tom Wilson.

    Letter by Bin Wu et.al

    Focus

    Displays

  • No. 10 October 2010

    Open eye-diagram of an optical data stream at 40 giga bit per second after after being processed by an all-optical signal regenerator designed for a coherent communications link.

    Cover design by Tom Wilson.

    Letter by Radan Slavik et.al

  • No. 9 September 2010

    Graphene is attracting signficant attention from the optical community for its potential use in photodetectors, solar cells, saturable absorbers and light-emitting devices.

    Cover design by Tom Wilson.

    Review article by F. Bonaccorso et.al

    Focus

    Solar cells

  • No. 8 August 2010

    Silicon photonics looks poised to provide low-cost, high-speed solutions that will revolutionize optical communications systems. The cover image shows Intel’s recently unveiled fully integrated transmitter chip with hybrid silicon lasers that connects to a coupler consisted of a single optical fibre, showing the feasibility of integration of individual photonic devices on a single chip.

    Image courtesy of InTouchStudios.com.

    Interview with Mario Paniccia

  • No. 7 July 2010

    Image of the surface of a photonic crystal laser that uses a carefully designed pattern of voids in the semiconductor to provide beamsteering capability.

    Cover design by Tom Wilson.

    Letter by Kurosaka et al.

  • No. 6 June 2010

    Free-space teleportation of quantum states over long distances will be required for the deployment of quantum information processing on a global scale. This goal is now one step closer to reality, with scientists in China successfully demonstrating free-space quantum teleportation of the state of a photon over a 16 km open-air link between Beijing and Huailai in the Hebei province.

    Cover design by Tom Wilson.

    Letter by Jin et al.

  • No. 5 May 2010

    The Yagi-Uda antenna is an iconic design in the field of radiowave transmission and detection. Scientists in Japan have now made a nanoscale equivalent from an array of gold nanorods that operates with visible light.

    Cover design by Tom Wilson.

    Letter by Kosako et al.

  • No. 4 April 2010

    Low light levels and decreasing detector pixel sizes mean that the quantum nature of light can manifest itself in imaging techniques. Italian researchers have now demonstrated that quantum correlations of light can be used to obtain higher signal-to-noise ratios than those possible through classical imaging methods.

    Cover design by Tom Wilson.

    Letter by G. Brida et al.

  • No. 3 March 2010

    By embedding an InAs quantum dot into a tapered GaAs nanowire European scientists have succeeded in constructing a highly efficient optically pumped source of single photons.

    Cover design by Claudon et al.

    Letter by Claudon et al.

  • No. 2 February 2010

    Quantum electrodynamics suggests that when exposed to sufficiently high laser intensities, a vacuum should start to behave like a weak nonlinear medium and support photon–photon scattering. Although this phenomenon has not yet been experimentally confirmed, Ben King and colleagues now describe an elegant experiment that should make observation possible.

    Cover design by Tom Wilson.

    Letter by Ben King et al.

  • No. 1 January 2010

    Light pulses so short that they contain just a single cycle of the electric field have now been demonstrated by interfering two distinct pulse streams emitted from an erbium-doped fibre laser. The trick is the careful spectral engineering of the two streams.

    Cover design by Tom Wilson.

    Letter by Krauss et al.

    Focus

    Lithography