Optics and photonics articles within Nature Photonics

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  • News & Views |

    The fast response and efficiency of plastic scintillators are severely degraded by the preferential population of slow triplet excited states in luminescence centres, such as in dye molecules. This issue can be solved by hot exciton manipulation, which avoids population of the lowest triplet state.

    • Martin Nikl

  • News & Views |

    Nonlinear optical resonators allow the coherent conversion of photons, yet fabrication tolerances limit their wavelength accuracy. Introducing periodic modulation in ring resonators is shown to allow robust and predictable selection of the converted photons.

    • Alfredo De Rossi
    •  & Sylvain Combrié

  • 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
    | Open Access

    A reflective spatial light modulator for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) or soft X-ray light is demonstrated in an electronic Wigner crystal material with a sub-90-nm feature size. The diffraction grating imprinted by sub-picosecond EUV beams is rewritable. The projected efficiency according to the modelling exceeds 1%.

    • Igor Vaskivskyi
    • , Anze Mraz
    •  & Dragan Mihailovic

  • Article |

    An optical readout technique for the chemical potential of an arbitrary two-dimensional material is realized using a monolayer transition metal dichalcogenide semiconductor sensor whose optical response sharply depends on the chemical potential.

    • Zhengchao Xia
    • , Yihang Zeng
    •  & Kin Fai Mak

  • 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

  • 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

    Photonic crystal microring resonators with a periodic corrugation inscribed along the resonator’s circumference allow programmable synthetic reflection for self-injection-locked microcombs and their operation exclusively in the single-soliton regime.

    • Alexander E. Ulanov
    • , Thibault Wildi
    •  & Tobias Herr

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Using programmable integrated photonics to generate a higher-order free-space structured light beam promises lossless and reconfigurable control of the spatial distribution of light’s amplitude and phase with very short switching times.

    • Johannes Bütow
    • , Jörg S. Eismann
    •  & Peter Banzer

  • Article |

    Researchers overcome the typical scintillator trade-off between high efficiency and speed. In organic scintillators, researchers drove hot excitons into fast singlet emission states without involving the lowest triplet states, which led to a fast radiative lifetime and strong light yield that may be applicable to ultrafast detection and imaging.

    • Xinyuan Du
    • , Shan Zhao
    •  & Jiang 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

  • Article |

    Using a self-referenced attosecond photoelectron interferometry on helium atoms, the electron subcycle motion along the light propagation direction is observed in the 15 pm range. A time delay of 15 ± 10 as between the electric-dipole and electric-quadrupole transitions is also revealed.

    • Jintai Liang
    • , Meng Han
    •  & Hans Jakob Wörner

  • Article |

    Dynamic resonance fluorescence spectra beyond the Mollow-triplet are observed in a In(Ga)As quantum dot in a micropillar. Multiple side peaks, excitation-induced spectral asymmetry, and cavity filtering effects are experimentally observed and theoretically reproduced by a full quantum model that includes phonon-induced decoherence.

    • Shunfa Liu
    • , Chris Gustin
    •  & Jin Liu

  • Article |

    A skyrmion is a topologically stable field configuration. A non-local skyrmion, which has been hitherto elusive in condensed-matter physics, is realized by using entangled photons with a non-trivial topology. The connection between the notions of topology and entanglement is investigated, revealing topological invariance even when entanglement is fragile.

    • Pedro Ornelas
    • , Isaac Nape
    •  & Andrew Forbes

  • News & Views |

    One-way light transmission can be realized by embracing, rather than mitigating, thermal effects in carefully engineered metasurfaces.

    • Said Rahimzadeh-Kalaleh Rodriguez
    •  & Sander A. Mann

  • 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 |

    Advances in the understanding of optical skyrmions, within a unified topological framework, are reviewed. The field structure of such optical quasiparticles, and their topological characteristics, may be useful for fields ranging from imaging to quantum technologies.

    • Yijie Shen
    • , Qiang Zhang
    •  & Anatoly V. Zayats

  • 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 |

    A coherent microwave-to-optical conversion scheme, previously feasible only under cryogenic environments, has now been expanded to ambient conditions by using Rydberg atoms.

    • Kai-Yu Liao
    • , Hui Yan
    •  & Shi-Liang Zhu

  • 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

  • News & Views |

    A large-angle twist between two bilayer graphene films makes a sensitive and broadband infrared–terahertz detector as a result of interlayer screening and a crystal field-induced bandgap.

    • Bingchen Deng
    •  & Fengnian Xia

  • 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

  • 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

    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

  • Comment |

    We posit that inconsistent interpretations of experimental data have led to inaccurate claims on metalens focusing efficiencies. By performing a meta-analysis, we show that extraordinary claims of high focusing efficiency at high numerical apertures are, unfortunately, not yet backed by rigorous simulation or experimental results.

    • Rajesh Menon
    •  & Berardi Sensale-Rodriguez

  • News & Views |

    A scheme for fast, comprehensive characterization of high-dimensional quantum states could aid quantum applications in imaging and information processing.

    • Gregory Kanter
    •  & Prem Kumar

  • News & Views |

    Combining photoacoustic excitation with optomechanics enables the mechanical modes associated with entire microorganisms to be detected, demonstrating that mechanical spectroscopy allows us to identify microorganisms and characterize their life stages.

    • Eduardo Gil-Santos

  • 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

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