Optical physics articles within Nature Physics

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    So far, a continuous time crystal has only been implemented on a quantum system. Optically driven many-body interactions in a nanomechanical photonic metamaterial now allow the realization of a classical continuous time crystal.

    • Tongjun Liu
    • , Jun-Yu Ou
    •  & Nikolay I. Zheludev

  • News & Views |

    Levitated nanoparticles can now be cooled to the motional ground state in two dimensions. This advance could enable a new generation of macroscopic quantum experiments.

    • Dalziel J. Wilson

  • Article |

    A temporal version of Young’s double-slit experiment shows characteristic interference in the frequency domain when light interacts with time slits produced by ultrafast changes in the refractive index of an epsilon-near-zero material.

    • Romain Tirole
    • , Stefano Vezzoli
    •  & Riccardo Sapienza

  • Research Briefing |

    Photon bound states are quantum states of light that emerge in systems with ultrahigh optical non-linearities. A single artificial atom was used to study the dynamics of these states, revealing that the number of photons within the pulse determines the time delay after the pulse scatters off the atom.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Measurements on a single artificial atom—a quantum dot—coupled to an optical cavity show scattering dynamics that depend on the number of photons involved in the light–matter interaction, which is a signature of stimulated emission.

    • Natasha Tomm
    • , Sahand Mahmoodian
    •  & Richard J. Warburton

  • Article |

    The scalability of quantum information processing applications is generally hindered by loss and inefficient preparation and detection. A minimal loss network based on phonons has now been realized with trapped ions.

    • Wentao Chen
    • , Yao Lu
    •  & Kihwan Kim

  • News & Views |

    A new variation on cathodoluminescence provides a view of a sample’s optical response with time resolution shorter than an optical cycle.

    • Catherine Kealhofer

  • News & Views |

    Quantum correlations between entangled particles can be used by parties in a network to verify that they share a specific quantum state. A proposal for network-assisted self-testing generalizes this approach to states of any number of qubits.

    • Anna Pappa

  • Letter |

    Plasmonics allows precise engineering of light–matter interactions and is the driver behind many optical devices. The local observation of a plasmonic quantum wave packet is a step towards bringing these functionalities to the quantum regime.

    • Sebastian Pres
    • , Bernhard Huber
    •  & Tobias Brixner

  • News & Views |

    Strongly laser-driven quantum correlated many-body systems lead to the generation of light with exotic quantum features — the quantumness of a many-body system is imprinted on the state of the emitted light.

    • Paraskevas Tzallas

  • Article |

    Strongly driven light sources have become useful in many ways but are limited to classical emission. A quantum-optical theory now shows how non-classical states of light can be achieved from strongly-driven many-body systems, for example, non-coherent and correlated high-harmonic generation.

    • Andrea Pizzi
    • , Alexey Gorlach
    •  & Ido Kaminer

  • Article |

    Dynamic and disordered media destroy the correlations that underlie many quantum measurement protocols and applications. However, coherently backscattered photons can remain partially correlated due to interference between scattering trajectories.

    • Mamoon Safadi
    • , Ohad Lib
    •  & Yaron Bromberg

  • News & Views |

    Long-theorized, non-dispersive de Broglie wave packets have been optically synthesized using classically entangled ring-shaped space-time wave packets in a medium exhibiting anomalous dispersion.

    • Mbaye Diouf
    • , Joshua A. Burrow
    •  & Kimani C. Toussaint Jr.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sufficient optical gain provided by Yb3+ doping allows phonon lasing from a levitated optomechanical system at the microscale, which exhibits strong mechanical amplitudes and nonlinear mechanical harmonics above the lasing threshold.

    • Tengfang Kuang
    • , Ran Huang
    •  & Guangzong Xiao

  • Article |

    de Broglie–Mackinnon wave packets are an extension of matter waves, but have so far remained a theoretical construct. Combining spatio-temporal light fields with anomalous dispersion has now allowed their experimental observation.

    • Layton A. Hall
    •  & Ayman F. Abouraddy

  • Article |

    Interactions between photons arise due to the presence of optical nonlinearities. In topological Thouless pumps, a sufficiently strong nonlinearity leads to soliton transport with a fractionally quantized plateau structure—reminiscent of transport in the fractional quantum Hall effect.

    • Marius Jürgensen
    • , Sebabrata Mukherjee
    •  & Mikael C. Rechtsman

  • News & Views |

    Ultrafast laser fields are able to widely tune the physical properties of semiconductors by generating virtual states. Using strong fields at energies below the optical bandgap, control of excitons in two-dimensional semiconductors has now been demonstrated.

    • Ioannis Paradisanos
    •  & Bernhard Urbaszek

  • Article |

    Generalized measurements that do not correspond to conventional basis projections of the quantum wavefunction are a part of several important protocols in quantum information. These measurements can be certifiably performed on higher-dimensional systems using optical fibre technology.

    • Daniel Martínez
    • , Esteban S. Gómez
    •  & Gustavo Lima

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The intermediate states in photo-excited phase transitions are expected to be inhomogeneous. However, ultrafast X-ray imaging shows the early part of the metal–insulator transition in VO2 is homogeneous but then becomes heterogeneous.

    • Allan S. Johnson
    • , Daniel Perez-Salinas
    •  & Simon E. Wall

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Multidimensional coherent spectroscopy measurements in iron-based superconductors demonstrate how the coupling between a superconductor and strong light pulses can drive the transition into a non-equilibrium superconducting state with distinct collective modes.

    • L. Luo
    • , M. Mootz
    •  & J. Wang

  • News & Views |

    A clever experiment with a photonic circuit has realized three-dimensional non-Abelian quantum behaviour — introducing an experimental testbed for field and gauge theories.

    • Andrew G. White

  • News & Views |

    Manipulating the chirality of electron vortices using attosecond metrology allows the clocking of continuum–continuum transitions, bringing the dream of time-resolved quantum physics a little closer.

    • Jean Marcel Ngoko Djiokap

  • Letter |

    Interspecies comparisons between atomic optical clocks are important for several technological applications. A recently proposed spectroscopy technique extends the interrogation times of clocks, leading to highly stable comparison between species.

    • May E. Kim
    • , William F. McGrew
    •  & David R. Leibrandt

  • Article |

    Attosecond circular-dichroism chronoscopy—a spectroscopy technique that employs two circularly polarized pulses in co-rotating and counter-rotating geometries—can measure the amplitudes and phases of continuum–continuum transitions in electron vortices.

    • Meng Han
    • , Jia-Bao Ji
    •  & Hans Jakob Wörner

  • Editorial |

    The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”, a long-anticipated topic for the prize.

  • Research Briefing |

    The spatiotemporal profile of the electric field around a high-energy electron beam was visualized using an ultrafast technique based on electro-optic sampling. By investigating the formation of the Coulomb field it was possible to experimentally confirm the validity of the predictions of special relativity regarding electromagnetic fields.

  • Review Article |

    Multiple scattering fundamentally complicates the task of sending light through turbid media, as many applications require. This Review summarizes the theoretical framework and experimental techniques to understand and control these processes.

    • Hui Cao
    • , Allard Pieter Mosk
    •  & Stefan Rotter

  • Perspective |

    It is not immediately obvious whether photons retain the information they carry when they traverse a disordered or multimodal medium. This Perspective discusses the extent to which the quantum properties of light can be preserved and controlled.

    • Ohad Lib
    •  & Yaron Bromberg

  • Review Article |

    Nonlinearities allow the large number of modes in a multimode fibre to interact and create emergent phenomena. This Review presents the breadth of the high-dimensional nonlinear physics that can be studied in this platform.

    • Logan G. Wright
    • , Fan O. Wu
    •  & Frank W. Wise

  • Review Article |

    Seeing—and consequently imaging—through turbid media such as fog is a difficult task, as multiple scattering scrambles the visual information. This Review summarizes techniques that physically or computationally reconstruct the images.

    • Jacopo Bertolotti
    •  & Ori Katz

  • News & Views |

    All-optical devices hold promise as a platform for ultralow-power, sub-nanosecond photonic classical and quantum information processing. Measurements of the dynamics of a single photon switch unveil the quantum correlations at the root of its operation.

    • Victoria A. Norman
    •  & Marina Radulaski

  • Letter |

    Efficient interactions between two photons is a challenging requirement for quantum information processing. A quantum dot coupled to a waveguide produces strong interactions that can induce photon correlations and reshape two-photon wavepackets.

    • Hanna Le Jeannic
    • , Alexey Tiranov
    •  & Peter Lodahl

  • Research Briefing |

    Attosecond charge migration in a neutral molecule has been observed to decohere within approximately 10 fs. However, this does not mean that the electronic coherence is irreversibly lost, as the charge migration is observed to revive after 40–50 fs. These findings have the potential to enable laser control of photochemical processes.

  • News & Views |

    Quantum confinement effects offer a more comprehensive understanding of the fundamental processes that drive extreme optical nonlinearities in nano-engineered solids, opening a route to unlocking the potential of high-order harmonic generation.

    • Julien Madéo
    •  & Keshav M. Dani

  • News & Views |

    Quantum computing operations are realized using acoustic devices, paving the way for a new type of quantum processor.

    • Amy Navarathna
    •  & Warwick P. Bowen

  • News & Views |

    Upon combining dissipative and nonlinear effects in a bipartite lattice of cavity polaritons, dissipatively stabilized bulk gap solitons emerge, which create a topological interface.

    • Flore K. Kunst

  • Article |

    Drive engineering in optical systems can be used to stabilize new nonlinear phases in topological systems. Dissipatively stabilized gap solitons in a polariton lattice establish drive engineering as a resource for nonlinear topological photonics.

    • Nicolas Pernet
    • , Philippe St-Jean
    •  & Jacqueline Bloch

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