Lasers, LEDs and light sources articles within Nature Photonics

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  • Q&A |

    A ring laser gyroscope, located at the Geodetic Observatory Wettzell in Southern Germany, measures variations in the Earth’s rotation. Nature Photonics spoke to a key researcher on the project, Ulrich Schreiber, about the system’s birth, teething issues, and how it may one day probe the El Niño effect.

    • David Pile

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A quantum-dot laser directly grown on silicon that is scalable, low cost with an intrinsic linewidth of 16 Hz when subject to feedback from a low-quality-factor external cavity is reported.

    • Bozhang Dong
    • , Yating Wan
    •  & John E. Bowers

  • Article |

    Researchers focused hard X-rays from a free-electron laser down to transverse dimensions of ~7 nm × 7 nm, enabling a two-order increase in intensity of photons and yielding access to the elusive 1022 W cm−2 regime. Such intense, short-wavelength electromagnetic radiation may probe atomic, molecular and optical physics with extremely high resolution.

    • Jumpei Yamada
    • , Satoshi Matsuyama
    •  & Kazuto Yamauchi

  • News & Views |

    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.

    • Kaveh Delfanazari

  • News & Views |

    A photonic equivalent to disclination in crystals has been used to produce orbital angular momentum laser light directly on-chip, ushering in compact and efficient twisted-light lasers.

    • Andrew Forbes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    An integrated high-energy laser that combines a passively Q-switched laser cavity based on a silicon-nitride photonic integrated circuit with an optically pumped gain layer consisting of thulium-doped alumina is reported, representing a pivotal advancement in integrated pulsed lasers.

    • Neetesh Singh
    • , Jan Lorenzen
    •  & Franz X. Kärtner

  • News & Views |

    Electrical excitation of a perovskite light-emitting diode is shown to contribute to optical gain, a milestone on the path towards a non-epitaxial laser diode.

    • Barry P. Rand
    •  & Noel C. Giebink

  • Article |

    A chemical washing method called solvent sieve is developed to resolve the phase dimension issue of metal halide perovskites. The sieved perovskites demonstrate a record external quantum efficiency of 29.5% and a T50 lifetime of 18.67 h at 12,000 cd m−2; 80% of the device external quantum efficiency lasts for 100 days in the ambient.

    • Shuo Ding
    • , Qiangqiang Wang
    •  & Chaoyu Xiang

  • Article |

    Addition of a multifunctional ionic additive in mixed two-dimensional–three-dimensional bromide/chloride perovskites enables efficient blue perovskite LEDs with external quantum efficiency of up to 21.4% and half-lifetime of 129 min at an initial luminance of 100 cd m–2.

    • Shuai Yuan
    • , Linjie Dai
    •  & Richard H. Friend

  • News & Views |

    Acoustic modulation of atmospheric air enables the deflection of laser pulses with a peak power of 20 gigawatts, expanding the acousto-optics toolbox to high-power laser manipulation in ambient air.

    • Günter Steinmeyer

  • Review Article |

    The progress made in developing light-emitting technologies that are wearable, attachable or implantable is reviewed and potential applications and challenges are discussed.

    • Zhitao Zhang
    • , Yue Wang
    •  & Chunhai Fan

  • News & Views |

    Modelling shows how plasma density gradients can be tailored to compress optical pulses in the final stages of laser systems towards exawatt (1018 W) peak powers.

    • Brendan Dromey

  • Article
    | Open Access

    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.

    • Min-Soo Hwang
    • , Ha-Reem Kim
    •  & Hong-Gyu Park

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Researchers propose a laser pulse compression method for exawatt to zettawatt lasers based on spatially varying dispersion of an inhomogeneous plasma. This may enable, for example, pulse compression of a laser pulse from 2.35 ps to 10.3 fs. The approach is robust at high intensities.

    • Min Sup Hur
    • , Bernhard Ersfeld
    •  & Hyyong Suk

  • Q&A |

    Allen Weeks, Director General of the Extreme Light Infrastructure European Research Infrastructure Consortium, talks to Nature Photonics about the founding and future of the high-power-laser facilities, and stimulating a resurgence of physics in new EU member countries.

    • David Pile

  • News & Views |

    New conductive and perovskite inks enable hand-drawing of optoelectronic devices with a ballpoint pen on a variety of daily substrates, including paper, textiles and other irregular surfaces.

    • Faheem Ershad
    • , Wenjing Song
    •  & Cunjiang Yu

  • Perspective |

    Since the inception of the idea of temporal solitons in optical fibres, published in 1973, the concept of optical solitons has revolutionized the fundamental science of optics and photonics technologies. This Perspective gives an outlook on the future of solitons in ultrafast lasers, frequency combs, biomedical applications, telecommunications and signal processing, as well as the emerging new science of solitons.

    • Andrea Blanco-Redondo
    • , C. Martijn de Sterke
    •  & Sergei K. Turitsyn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A cascaded hard X-ray self-seeding system is demonstrated at the European X-ray free-electron laser. The setup enables millijoule-level pulses in the photon energy range of 6–14 keV at the rate of ten trains per second, with each train including hundreds of pulses arriving at a megahertz repetition rate.

    • Shan Liu
    • , Christian Grech
    •  & Gianluca Geloni

  • News & Views |

    The demonstration of a low-loss diamond mirror cavity that can temporally store X-ray pulses brings hope for a future generation of X-ray free electron lasers.

    • Enrico Allaria
    •  & Giovanni De Ninno

  • Article |

    Tailoring the composition of organic cations enables manipulating the recombination rates of perovskites. Optimized solution-processed perovskite emitters fabricated on silicon exhibit up to 42.6-MHz modulation bandwidth and 50-Mbps data rate.

    • Aobo Ren
    • , Hao Wang
    •  & Wei Zhang

  • News & Views |

    Dynamic control of incoherent light sources at ultrafast timescales is tremendously challenging. Now, a technique using a spatially structured optical pump and semiconductor metasurfaces has been developed that dynamically steers sub-picosecond pulses of ultrafast incoherent emission.

    • Angela Demetriadou

  • Article |

    A passively mode-locked quantum cascade laser (QCL) is developed by employing a heterogeneous gain medium and integrating graphene saturable absorbers along the entire QCL waveguide. Self-starting optical pulses of 4.0 ps are electrically generated in the 2.30–3.55 THz frequency range.

    • Elisa Riccardi
    • , Valentino Pistore
    •  & Miriam S. Vitiello

  • News & Views |

    Due to dispersion, the group velocity of laser pulses propagating in plasmas slows down with increasing wavelength, which presents challenges for precision-controlled plasma interactions. Now, new techniques for spatio-temporal pulse shaping have lifted this limitation in the demonstration of short-pulse table-top soft X-ray lasers.

    • Sam K. Barber

  • News & Views |

    The Ti:Sa laser, a workhorse of any optics laboratory, is typically a bench-top system. A hybrid integration approach now enables a low-threshold photonic-circuit-integrated Ti:Sa laser the size of a fingernail.

    • Arnan Mitchell
    •  & Heike Ebendorff-Heidepriem

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The addition of a strong coupling layer allows polariton-based emission from red and green organic light-emitting diodes with high external quantum efficiency up to 10%, linewidth smaller than 20 nm and angle-independent emission, with spectral shifts smaller than 10 nm over a 60° angular tilt.

    • Andreas Mischok
    • , Sabina Hillebrandt
    •  & Malte C. Gather

  • 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

  • Article |

    Single-crystal perovskite LEDs exhibit reduced ion migration and Auger recombination and increased device lifetime. Perovskite single-crystals-based LEDs exhibit a maximum brightness of 86,000 cd m−2, a peak EQE of 11.2% and T50 lifetime of 12,500 h at an initial luminance of 100 cd m−2.

    • Wenjing Chen
    • , Zongming Huang
    •  & Zhengguo Xiao

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