Optical techniques articles within Nature Photonics

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  • Letter
    | Open Access

    A hyperspectral camera based on a random array of CMOS-compatible Fabry–Pérot filters is demonstrated. The hyperspectral camera exhibits performance comparable with that of a typical RGB camera, with 45% sensitivity to visible light, a spatial resolution of 3 px for 3 dB contrast, and a frame rate of 32.3 fps at VGA resolution.

    • Motoki Yako
    • , Yoshikazu Yamaoka
    •  & Atsushi Ishikawa

  • Article |

    The combination of optical phase conjugation and light amplification enables wavefront shaping with simultaneously optimized operational speed, number of control degrees of freedom and energy of the focused wavefront. Shaping with a 10 μs latency time over about 106 control modes and energy gain approaching unity is demonstrated.

    • Zhongtao Cheng
    • , Chengmingyue Li
    •  & Lihong V. Wang

  • Obituary |

    Recollected by his colleagues as a creative and humble scholar with an indomitable will, Byoungho Lee was enthusiastic about realizing the holistic potential of holographic displays.

    • YongKeun Park
    • , Jae-Hyeung Park
    •  & Ting-Chung Poon

  • Article |

    Relative synchronization between free-electron laser pulses and a near-infrared field fields is achieved with 24 as resolution by using a correlation analysis of single-shot photoelectron spectra. It is applied to coherently control the photoionization process in neon atom on the attosecond timescale.

    • Praveen Kumar Maroju
    • , Michele Di Fraia
    •  & Giuseppe Sansone

  • Review Article |

    Recent advances in optical metalenses are reviewed with a focus on their unique features and applications in the space of optical metasystems.

    • Amir Arbabi
    •  & Andrei Faraon

  • Review Article |

    Recent developments in reconfigurable metasurfaces are reviewed with a focus on case studies that are promising for commercialization and associated challenges.

    • Tian Gu
    • , Hyun Jung Kim
    •  & Juejun Hu

  • 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

  • News & Views |

    Ultrasound-induced gas bubbles in tissue can temporarily minimize optical scattering, enabling laser light to be focused at greater depth for higher-resolution imaging.

    • Paul Beard
    •  & Kishan Dholakia

  • 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

  • Article |

    High-speed, high-resolution optics-based printing typically requires femtosecond pulsed lasers. We demonstrate optical printing using indigo-blue laser diodes and a red continuous-wave laser, achieving a peak printing rate of 7 × 106 voxels s–1 at a voxel volume of 0.55 µm3.

    • Vincent Hahn
    • , Pascal Rietz
    •  & Martin Wegener

  • News & Views |

    A combination of state-of-the-art temporal and spatial shaping techniques enables shaping pulsed laser light in all dimensions in a correlated manner, paving the way for new classes of on-demand space–time wavepackets.

    • Pierre Béjot
    •  & Bertrand Kibler

  • Article |

    Nitrogen-vacancy centres in surface-engineered diamond are demonstrated to operate as charge-sensitive fluorescent reporters, enabling an optical scheme for voltage recording in physical and biological systems.

    • D. J. McCloskey
    • , N. Dontschuk
    •  & D. A. Simpson

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    An ultrabroadband femtosecond enhancement cavity is developed, using gold-coated mirrors and a wedged-diamond-plate input coupler. Simultaneous enhancement of a 22–40 THz offset-free frequency comb allows cavity-enhanced time-domain spectroscopy of gas mixtures based on electro-optic sampling in the mid-infrared range.

    • Philipp Sulzer
    • , Maximilian Högner
    •  & Ioachim Pupeza

  • Obituary |

    Gabriel Popescu passed away in June 2022. He will be remembered as a creative leader in biophotonics, with pioneering contributions to quantitative phase imaging and spectroscopy, an engaging collaborator and a dear friend.

    • Natan T. Shaked
    • , YongKeun Park
    •  & Peter T. C. So

  • Article |

    Microwave-driven holonomic quantum gates on an optically selected electron spin in a nitrogen-vacancy centre in diamond are demonstrated. Optically addressable entanglement is generated between the electron and adjacent nitrogen nuclear spin.

    • Yuhei Sekiguchi
    • , Kazuki Matsushita
    •  & Hideo Kosaka

  • Article |

    Chiral phonons—long-range lattice vibrations with rotational motion of atoms—are observed by terahertz chiroptical spectroscopy in biocrystals. Terahertz circular dichroism peaks between 0.2 and 2.0 THz clearly identify the chirality of these phonons in various microcrystalline and nanofibrils of biomolecules.

    • Won Jin Choi
    • , Keiichi Yano
    •  & Nicholas A. Kotov

  • Letter |

    Waveforms of mid-infrared few-cycle optical pulses are captured in a single shot by measuring nonlinear photocurrents in a Si-based image sensor chip. The temporal resolution of waveforms is determined by the spatial resolution of the image sensor.

    • Yangyang Liu
    • , John E. Beetar
    •  & Michael Chini

  • News & Views |

    For 20 years, nanoscale 3D printing has been based on two-photon absorption, requiring expensive pulsed lasers. Now, via a two-step absorption process, such printing has been demonstrated using a low-cost, low-power continuous-wave laser diode, showing the potential for dramatic cost reductions in 3D nanoprinting.

    • Paul V. Braun
    •  & Mark L. Brongersma

  • News & Views |

    The three-dimensional images generated by digital holography are usually limited to a single color. A new technique exploiting frequency combs generates holograms with hundreds of colors at once.

    • Chao Dong
    •  & David Burghoff

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    Dual-comb digital holography based on an interferometer composed of two frequency combs of slightly different repetition frequencies and a lensless camera sensor allows highly frequency-multiplexed holography with high temporal coherence.

    • Edoardo Vicentini
    • , Zhenhai Wang
    •  & Nathalie Picqué

  • Review Article |

    Nearly 100 years after the prediction of Brillouin light-scattering spectroscopy, or Brillouin–Mandelstam light-scattering spectroscopy, the effect has proved itself a powerful tool for decades. Now its application to probing confined acoustic phonons, phononic metamaterials and magnons is reviewed.

    • Fariborz Kargar
    •  & Alexander A. Balandin

  • News & Views |

    Reducing the footprint of optical spectrometers is a critical requirement for many in-field applications. Now, a single black phosphorus photodetector with a wavelength-scale size enables mid-infrared computational spectrometry.

    • Vicente Durán

  • Obituary |

    Webb’s work helped fundamentally reshape basic research and advanced manufacturing in the generation and application of photonics across disciplines, from fundamental and applied physics to the biosciences.

    • Jeffrey Squier

  • Article |

    A single-photodetector spectrometer based on black phosphorus is demonstrated in the wavelength range from 2 to 9 μm. The footprint is 9 × 16 μm2. The spectrometer is free from bulky interferometers and gratings, and is electrically reconfigurable.

    • Shaofan Yuan
    • , Doron Naveh
    •  & Fengnian Xia

  • Obituary |

    The Indian scientist and passionate entrepreneur responsible for pioneering work on optical fibres and biomedical optics has passed away aged 94.

    • Kamal P. Singh

  • News & Views |

    Optical acoustic sensors have gained interest for use in photoacoustic imaging systems, but can they dethrone conventional piezoelectric sensors altogether?

    • David C. Garrett
    •  & Lihong V. Wang

  • Letter |

    The concept of scattering invariant modes is introduced to produce the same transmitted field profiles through a multiple scattering sample and a reference medium. Their correlations with the ballistic light can be used to improve imaging inside scattering materials.

    • Pritam Pai
    • , Jeroen Bosch
    •  & Allard P. Mosk

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A stimulated-emission-depletion-based fluorescence localization and super-resolution microscopy concept that is capable of attaining a spatial resolution down at the size scale of the fluorophores themselves and a localization precision of 1–3 nm in standard deviation is reported.

    • Michael Weber
    • , Marcel Leutenegger
    •  & Stefan W. Hell

  • News & Views |

    A new paradigm is emerging in which molecular properties are controlled by modifying the local electromagnetic environment, rather than the traditional approach of changing their composition or structure. Now, a tool to investigate such effects has been demonstrated that should accelerate progress in this exciting field.

    • Bill Barnes

  • Obituary |

    Radiation pressure exerted by light was a lifelong passion for Arthur Ashkin. He foresaw that light pressure could do useful work and invented the optical tweezers that can trap microscopic objects, from small ‘living things’ down to individual atoms.

    • René-Jean Essiambre

  • Editorial |

    Artificial intelligence deployment in photonics has spawned much research activity during 2020, but optimism must be balanced by realism. This month we celebrate the advances in the field with a focus issue.

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