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Volume 5 Issue 11, November 2009

High-harmonic generation could be the basis of frequency combs for vacuum–ultraviolet wavelengths. But first we need a better understanding of harmonic orders produced at photon energies lower than the gas-ionization threshold. It is now shown that harmonics as low as the seventh have contributions from different quantum paths and that their temporal coherence is long enough for a frequency comb. Letter p815 Cover design by David Shand

Editorial

  • Peer review is the cornerstone of scientific publishing. But it isn't always clear exactly what Nature Physics expects of its referees — let us explain.

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Research Highlights

  • The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Charles K. Kao for the development of optical fibres for telecommunications, and to Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith for the invention of charge-coupled device sensors.

    • Ed Gerstner
    Research Highlights
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News & Views

  • Cold atoms and photons confined together in high-quality optical resonators self-organize into complicated crystalline structures that have an optical-wavelength scale. Complex solid-state phenomena can be studied in real time on directly observable scales.

    • Helmut Ritsch
    News & Views
  • Coating nanowires with lipid bilayers allows the use of biological ion channels as biosensors.

    • Friedrich C. Simmel
    News & Views
  • Proliferation of so-called anyonic defects in a topological phase of quantum matter leads to a critical state that can be visualized as a 'quantum foam', with topology-changing fluctuations on all length scales.

    • Kareljan Schoutens
    News & Views
  • One way to collect data about black holes is to analyse the X-rays emitted from the surrounding plasmas heated to extreme temperatures by the flux of photons flowing into them. The use of intense lasers to recreate these conditions in the lab provides a potentially valuable tool for understanding what these data mean.

    • R. Paul Drake
    News & Views
  • The discovery of iron-based pnictide superconductors may have reinvigorated the field of high-temperature superconductivity, but the cuprate superconductors are still in the game.

    • C. W. Chu
    News & Views
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Letter

  • The ‘transmon’ design for superconducting qubits is particularly promising, owing to the long coherence times that it enables. Now, high-fidelity single-shot readout of such qubits — necessary for operating a quantum processor — has been demonstrated

    • François Mallet
    • Florian R. Ong
    • Daniel Esteve
    Letter
  • The so-called hidden-order state in URu2Si2 is further obscured by conflicting experimental observations. A first-principles calculation shows that an order parameter with real and imaginary parts can explain many of these conflicts.

    • Kristjan Haule
    • Gabriel Kotliar
    Letter
  • Similar to atoms in cold gases, exciton–polaritons in semiconductor microcavities can undergo Bose–Einstein condensation. A striking consequence of the appearance of macroscopic coherence in these systems is superfluidity. Now, clear evidence for such behaviour has been found in an exciton–polariton condensate.

    • Alberto Amo
    • Jérôme Lefrère
    • Alberto Bramati
    Letter
  • More efficient solar-energy conversion is possible if a single high-energy photon can be made to generate two electron–hole pairs in a cell, rather than a single pair plus heat. It is now shown that, contrary to expectation, this carrier multiplication is better in bulk semiconductor materials than in quantum dots.

    • J. J. H. Pijpers
    • R. Ulbricht
    • M. Bonn
    Letter
  • Frequency combs have revolutionized frequency metrology. High-harmonic generation in atoms has led to fast sources of short-wavelength photons. Combining these two technologies enables the transfer of frequency combs to the vacuum-ultraviolet with potential applications in spectroscopy.

    • Dylan C. Yost
    • Thomas R. Schibli
    • Kenneth J. Schafer
    Letter
  • It has been suggested that the extreme states of matter generated by high-intensity lasers could allow conditions similar to those in the vicinity of black holes to be studied in the lab. The observation of striking similarities between the X-ray spectra emitted by a laser-driven laboratory plasma and those measured from two high-mass binary star systems suggests such potential has been realized.

    • Shinsuke Fujioka
    • Hideaki Takabe
    • Kunioki Mima
    Letter
  • High-intensity X-ray sources such as synchrotrons and free-electron lasers need large particle accelerators to drive them. The demonstration of a synchrotron X-ray source that uses a laser-driven particle accelerator could widen the availability of intense X-rays for research in physics, materials science and biology.

    • Matthias Fuchs
    • Raphael Weingartner
    • Florian Grüner
    Letter
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