Nanoscience and technology articles within Nature Photonics

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  • News & Views |

    Holographic waveguides using shallow etching of silicon-on-insulator waveguides makes designing integrated, preset optical vector matrix multiplication computationally tractable and commercially available.

    • Daniel Brunner

  • News & Views |

    An optical fibre-fed superconducting electro-optic modulator with gigahertz bandwidth and attojoule per bit electric power consumption offers a fast, efficient means to connect superconducting circuits to the room temperature environment.

    • Paolo Pintus
    • , Mo Soltani
    •  & Galan Moody

  • News & Views |

    A non-common-path interferometric scheme enables holographic detection of single proteins of mass 90 kDa and estimation of single-protein polarizability.

    • Chia-Lung Hsieh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Time-resolved lightwave-driven scanning tunnelling spectroscopy is developed to investigate how the spin–orbit-split energy levels of a selenium vacancy within a WSe2 monolayer shift under phonon displacement. Ultrafast snapshots of the electronic tunnelling spectra reveal transient energy shifts up to 40 meV.

    • C. Roelcke
    • , L. Z. Kastner
    •  & Y. A. Gerasimenko

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Holographic microscopy with independent control of the signal and reference fields enables the holographic imaging of a single protein with mass below 100 kDa and estimation of their polarizability.

    • Jan Christoph Thiele
    • , Emanuel Pfitzner
    •  & Philipp Kukura

  • 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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Free-electron homodyne detection allows measuring phase-resolved optical responses in electron microscopy, demonstrated in the imaging of plasmonic fields with few-nanometre spatial and sub-cycle temporal resolutions.

    • John H. Gaida
    • , Hugo Lourenço-Martins
    •  & Claus Ropers

  • 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

  • Article |

    Superconducting electro-optic modulators for a cryogenic-to-room-temperature link are demonstrated. The record-low half-wave voltage of 42 mV is achieved on a 1-m-long modulator. By matching the velocity of microwave and optical signals, a 0.2-m-long modulator can achieve a 3 dB bandwidth of over 17 GHz.

    • Mohan Shen
    • , Jiacheng Xie
    •  & Hong X. Tang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Luminescence solar concentrators are improved by using a laminated structure that creates a practically non-decaying optical ‘guard rail’ for light. Design rules enabled external quantum efficiencies as high as 45% for 450 nm light, yielding a device efficiency of 7.6%, probably useful for energy-harvesting windows.

    • Kyoungwon Park
    • , Jeongmin Yi
    •  & Chul Jong Han

  • Review Article |

    This Review covers a comparison between various label-free biomedical imaging techniques, their advantages over label-based methods and relevant applications.

    • Natan T. Shaked
    • , Stephen A. Boppart
    •  & Jürgen Popp

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Detecting the vibrations of individual molecules directly in the mid-infrared regime is hindered by thermal noise. Here researchers bypass conventional detectors and upconvert the mid-infrared photons into visible light using molecular bonds, yielding an optical readout for single-molecule vibrational spectroscopy.

    • Rohit Chikkaraddy
    • , Rakesh Arul
    •  & Jeremy J. Baumberg

  • Article |

    By engineering the plasmonic response of a nanopatterned silver gate electrode, the radiative decay rate of excitons in a tungsten disulfide monolayer can be enhanced via the Purcell effect, creating high modulation efficiencies at room temperature.

    • Qitong Li
    • , Jung-Hwan Song
    •  & Mark L. Brongersma

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Spatial-frequency tracking adaptive beacon light-field encoded endoscopy enables imaging through a single multimode fibre under bending and twisting. In vivo imaging with subcellular resolution is demonstrated in mice models.

    • Zhong Wen
    • , Zhenyu Dong
    •  & Qing Yang

  • Article |

    Large perovskite nanocrystals are synthesized to increase the cryogenic exciton radiative rate. At liquid helium temperatures, single photons from perovskite nanocrystals coalesce at a beam splitter, signalling the existence of indistinguishable photon emission.

    • Alexander E. K. Kaplan
    • , Chantalle J. Krajewska
    •  & Moungi G. Bawendi

  • Article |

    An integrated electro-optic isolator on thin-film lithium niobate enables non-reciprocal isolation by microwave-driven travelling-wave phase modulation. The isolator exhibits a maximum optical isolation of 48.0 dB at around 1,553 nm and an on-chip insertion loss of 0.5 dB.

    • Mengjie Yu
    • , Rebecca Cheng
    •  & Marko Lončar

  • News & Views |

    Two papers in Science demonstrate tracking of the stepping motion of the kinesin motor protein with nanometric spatial precision and sub-millisecond temporal resolution by using MINFLUX, a highly photon-efficient single-molecule localization technique.

    • Fernando D. Stefani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Detection of gas radionuclides is limited in sensitivity with present methods, but may be useful in energy, security, medical and other sectors. In this work, gas-concentrating porous scintillating metal–organic frameworks are demonstrated for gas radionuclide detection.

    • Matteo Orfano
    • , Jacopo Perego
    •  & Angelo Monguzzi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    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.

    • Kostiantyn Sakhatskyi
    • , Bekir Turedi
    •  & Maksym V. Kovalenko

  • Article |

    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.

    • Luying Yi
    • , Bo Hou
    •  & Xiaogang Liu

  • News & Views |

    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.

    • Diederik S. Wiersma

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The dipole-dependent propagation of hybrid excitons in a van der Waals heterostructure containing a WSe2 bilayer is characterized by modulating the layer hybridization and interplay between many-body interactions of excitons with an applied vertical electric field.

    • Fedele Tagarelli
    • , Edoardo Lopriore
    •  & Andras Kis

  • 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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A continuous string of indistinguishable photons entangled in a cluster state is generated on demand from an InAs/GaAs quantum dot. The confined heavy-hole spin is used as an entangler. Under an externally tuned magnetic field, an optimized characteristic entanglement decay length of about ten photons is obtained.

    • Dan Cogan
    • , Zu-En Su
    •  & David Gershoni

  • Article |

    A chip-scale laser platform based on silicon nitride ring resonators and commercial Fabry–Pérot laser diodes is developed for the wavelength range from 404 nm to 785 nm. The achieved coarse and fine tunings are up to 12.5 nm and 33.9 GHz, respectively, with kilohertz-scale linewidths and side-mode suppression ratios above 35 dB.

    • Mateus Corato-Zanarella
    • , Andres Gil-Molina
    •  & Michal Lipson

  • Review Article |

    Robotic and other devices often demand ever more compact and sophisticated sensors. This Review assesses the opportunities for metasurfaces to provide optical functionality solutions for such applications.

    • Dragomir N. Neshev
    •  & Andrey E. Miroshnichenko

  • Review Article |

    Nonlocal effects—in which the optical response of a system at a given spatial point depends on the field in the surrounding space—are reviewed in the context of metasurfaces and flat optics. Nonlocal flat optics may be useful for controlling light in ultra-thin platforms.

    • Kunal Shastri
    •  & Francesco Monticone

  • Article |

    Up to 100 photons are resolved by a waveguide-integrated and hybrid spatiotemporal-multiplexed superconducting nanowire single-photon detector array. Using this detector array, photon statistical behaviour for a true thermal and a coherent light source is verified.

    • Risheng Cheng
    • , Yiyu Zhou
    •  & Hong X. Tang

  • News & Views |

    Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors offer outstanding performance, but the development of large-format imaging arrays is challenging. A new approach based on sectioning a single nanowire enables an eightfold improvement of the spatial resolution and the realization of a 1,024-pixel imager.

    • Daniel F. Santavicca

  • Article |

    A photodetector responding to only circularly polarized light is developed. It has a ring-shaped form, consisting of plasmonic nanostructures on a graphene sheet. Its zero-bias responsivity and detectivity of ellipticity in the mid-infrared at room temperature are 392 V W−1 and 0.03° Hz−1/2, respectively.

    • Jingxuan Wei
    • , Yang Chen
    •  & Cheng-Wei Qiu

  • Article |

    Panuski et al. demonstrate a programmable photonic crystal cavity array, enabling the spatiotemporal control of a 64 resonator, two-dimensional spatial light modulator with nanosecond- and femtojoule-order switching.

    • Christopher L. Panuski
    • , Ian Christen
    •  & Dirk R. Englund

  • Article |

    A 1,024 pixel superconducting nanowire single-photon imager over a detection area of 403.2 μm × 403.2 μm is demonstrated by introducing an orthogonal time–amplitude-multiplexing method. The spatial resolution and average temporal resolution are 12.6 μm and 67.3 ps, respectively.

    • Ling-Dong Kong
    • , Hui Wang
    •  & Pei-Heng Wu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A Fourier-transform waveguide spectrometer is demonstrated by using HgTe-quantum-dot-based photoconductors with a spectral response up to a wavelength of 2 μm. The spectral resolution is 50 cm–1. The total active spectrometer volume is below 100 μm × 100 μm × 100 μm.

    • Matthias J. Grotevent
    • , Sergii Yakunin
    •  & Ivan Shorubalko

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