Optical physics articles within Nature Physics

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  • News & Views |

    Nonlinear optical effects enable sophisticated functionalities to generate and manipulate light. The precise control of two distinct nonlinear phenomena in a photonic chip can enhance a key optical nonlinearity that makes single-photon sources more efficient.

    • Thiago P. Mayer Alegre
    •  & Gustavo S. Wiederhecker

  • Article |

    Polaritons are quasiparticles created through the coupling of matter excitations and light. A cold-atom experiment using matter waves instead of photons reports the observation of analogues of polaritons with tunable properties and no dissipation.

    • Joonhyuk Kwon
    • , Youngshin Kim
    •  & Dominik Schneble

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The charge transport mechanism in MXenes—an emerging class of layered materials—is not yet fully understood. A combination of terahertz spectroscopy and transport measurements shows that the formation of large polarons play a crucial role.

    • Wenhao Zheng
    • , Boya Sun
    •  & Mischa Bonn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nonlinear phononics is a method for creating transient structural changes in solids, but its effect is limited to the region of optical excitation. Now, coupling to a propagating polariton allows nonlinear phononics to drive a nonlocal response.

    • M. Henstridge
    • , M. Först
    •  & A. Cavalleri

  • News & Views |

    The interactions between coupled photonic resonators influence the properties of the whole network. Dissipative coupling extends the ability to engineer photonic networks and brings fully controllable, ‘utopian’ networks within reach.

    • Hrvoje Buljan
    • , Dario Jukić
    •  & Zhigang Chen

  • Article |

    Whether or not an electron wavepacket accumulates a time delay when tunnelling out of an atom is still under debate. Improved all-optical characterization of the tunnelling dynamics by combining one- and two-colour driving fields may shed light on this question.

    • Ihar Babushkin
    • , Álvaro Jiménez Galán
    •  & Misha Ivanov

  • Article |

    Physical systems with continuous degrees of freedom can be used to implement quantum error correction codes. An autonomous correction protocol has now been used to extend the lifetime of a qubit encoded in the motion of a trapped ion.

    • Brennan de Neeve
    • , Thanh-Long Nguyen
    •  & Jonathan P. Home

  • News & Views |

    Light travels through disordered media on a random path that is hard to control. A comprehensive study has now shown that optical energy can be deposited at a desired depth in a disordered waveguide by injecting a light field with a particular shape.

    • Oluwafemi S. Ojambati

  • Article |

    The modern understanding of quantum transport relies on geometric concepts such as the Berry phase. The geometric approach has now been extended to the theory of optical transitions.

    • Junyeong Ahn
    • , Guang-Yu Guo
    •  & Ashvin Vishwanath

  • News & Views |

    Solid-state sources of entangled photons with tailored properties are key elements for integrated quantum computing. Refractive-index perturbations propagating faster than the speed of light may offer a practical approach for generating entangled photon pairs.

    • Nahid Talebi

  • News & Views |

    Nonlinear optical effects are by default weak but they can be enhanced by sculpting the resulting spectrally periodic pulses from a fibre laser into an optimal shape.

    • Thibaut Sylvestre

  • Article |

    Despite their relevance for quantum technology, photon-pair sources are difficult to control. A theoretical proposal shows how photon pairs can be created from vacuum fluctuations in time-dependent systems, potentially enabling heralded single-photon frequency combs.

    • Jamison Sloan
    • , Nicholas Rivera
    •  & Marin Soljačić

  • Article |

    The nonlinear optical effects underlying many applications are typically weak, but linear dispersion engineering allows the generation of pulses comprising equidistant frequency components, which enhances the effective nonlinearity.

    • Joshua P. Lourdesamy
    • , Antoine F. J. Runge
    •  & C. Martijn de Sterke

  • Review Article |

    Interaction with light can be used to precisely control motional states. This Review surveys recent progress in the preparation of non-classical mechanical states and in the application of optomechanical platforms to specific tasks in quantum technology.

    • Shabir Barzanjeh
    • , André Xuereb
    •  & Eva M. Weig

  • News & Views |

    Solitary waves — solitons — occur in a wide range of physical systems with a broad array of attributes and applications. Carefully engineered light–matter interactions have now produced an optomechanical dissipative soliton with promising properties.

    • Alessia Pasquazi

  • News & Views |

    It has long been assumed that the quantum statistics of light are preserved when photons interact with plasmons. An analysis of the scattering process shows that this is not always the case, as light can mix and match different plasmonic pathways.

    • Mark Tame

  • News & Views |

    Integrating quantum technology with existing telecom infrastructure is hampered by a mismatch in operating frequencies. An optomechanical resonator now offers a strain-mediated spin–photon interface for long-distance quantum networks.

    • Lilian Childress
    •  & Jack Sankey

  • Article |

    Atoms in a semiconductor can have non-zero nuclear spins, creating a large ensemble with many quantum degrees of freedom. An electron spin coupled to the nuclei of a semiconductor quantum dot can witness the creation of entanglement within the ensemble.

    • Dorian A. Gangloff
    • , Leon Zaporski
    •  & Mete Atatüre

  • Article |

    Quantum networks require a connection between quantum memories and optical links, which often operate in different frequency ranges. An optomechanical device exploiting the strain dependence of a colour-centre spin provides such a spin–optics interface at room temperature.

    • Prasoon K. Shandilya
    • , David P. Lake
    •  & Paul E. Barclay

  • News & Views |

    In a study on high-harmonic generation from a dense atomic xenon gas, the strong-field light–matter interaction is shown to leave a quantum mechanical imprint on the incident light that escapes the semiclassical picture of strong-field physics.

    • Thomas Fennel

  • Perspective |

    The interaction between light and the crystal lattice of a quantum material can modify its properties. Utilizing nonlinear interactions allows this to be done in a controlled way to design specific non-equilibrium functionalities.

    • Ankit S. Disa
    • , Tobia F. Nova
    •  & Andrea Cavalleri

  • News & Views |

    Polaritons are hybrid states of light and matter that occur in a wide range of physical platforms. When a nanosphere is levitated inside an optical cavity, light can hybridize with the motion on a plane rather than along an axis, resulting in ‘vectorial’ polaritons.

    • Tania S. Monteiro

  • News & Views |

    Light propagating in the topological edge channel of an array of ring resonators is predicted to generate nested frequency combs: like a Matryoshka doll containing a set of smaller dolls, each ‘tooth’ of the comb comprises another frequency comb.

    • Vittorio Peano

  • Article |

    Optical frequency combs are a key technology in precision time keeping, spectroscopy and metrology. A theoretical proposal shows that introducing topological principles into their design makes on-chip combs more efficient and robust against fabrication defects.

    • Sunil Mittal
    • , Gregory Moille
    •  & Mohammad Hafezi

  • Letter |

    Ultrashort light pulses generate nanometre-scale wavepackets of magnons that propagate coherently and at high speed in an antiferromagnet. This pushes antiferromagnetic magnonics forward as a future platform for information processing.

    • J. R. Hortensius
    • , D. Afanasiev
    •  & A. D. Caviglia

  • News & Views |

    Nonlinearity and topology are both linked to symmetries, but what happens when the two are combined is not a trivial question. In a nonlinear photonic higher-order topological insulator, solitons localize on the corners together with the topological modes.

    • Grazia Salerno

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    The nonlinear properties of photonic topological insulators remain largely unexplored, as band topology is linked to linear systems. But nonlinear topological corner states and solitons can form in a second-order topological insulator, as shown by experiments.

    • Marco S. Kirsch
    • , Yiqi Zhang
    •  & Matthias Heinrich

  • News & Views |

    High-order harmonics of laser pulses yield spectral components with shorter wavelength and duration and tighter focus than the original pulse. Precise spatiotemporal characterization of this radiation from a relativistic plasma mirror is relevant for ultrafast science.

    • Laszlo Veisz

  • Article |

    Relativistic mirrors are a promising tool to reach laser intensities up to the Schwinger limit. Such a mirror is created in ultra-intense laser–solid interactions, and its temporal and spatial effects on the reflected laser beam are characterized.

    • Ludovic Chopineau
    • , Adrien Denoeud
    •  & Fabien Quéré

  • News & Views |

    The virtual photons that are exchanged when a free-electron vortex beam interacts with a nanoscopic target unlock an explicit connection between polarized optical spectroscopy and the inelastic scattering of scalar electron waves.

    • David J. Masiello

  • Article |

    The functionality of electron energy loss spectroscopy can be extended to include a polarization analogue constructed via the dipole transition vector between two electronic states, bringing it closer to its optical counterpart.

    • Hugo Lourenço-Martins
    • , Davy Gérard
    •  & Mathieu Kociak

  • Letter |

    Non-Hermitian concepts together with optical gain allow the tailoring of short- and long-range exchange interactions in integrated topological photonics, and an exact Haldane model can be realized in this way.

    • Yuzhou G. N. Liu
    • , Pawel S. Jung
    •  & Mercedeh Khajavikhan

  • Article |

    Topological materials are characterized by the topological invariants of filled bands, which cannot be used for bosonic systems. Instead, their topological invariants can be found via the transition from bound to leaky modes in photonic lattices.

    • Daniel Leykam
    •  & Daria A. Smirnova

  • News & Views |

    The short lifetime of light-induced superconductivity prevents the measurement of its transport properties. Encouraging this state to stay a little longer in K3C60 allows the observation of vanishing electrical resistance.

    • Anshul Kogar

  • Article |

    By exploiting polarization entanglement between photons, quantum holography can circumvent the need for first-order coherence that is vital to classical holography.

    • Hugo Defienne
    • , Bienvenu Ndagano
    •  & Daniele Faccio

  • News & Views |

    Among the many reasons a signal may deviate from perfect periodicity, quantum-limited jitter is arguably the most fundamental. A clever experiment has now stripped away technical noise to unveil quantum-limited jitter of ultrafast soliton frequency combs.

    • Miro Erkintalo

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