Physics articles within Nature Photonics

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  • 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
    | Open Access

    Biphoton digital holography is developed to perform quantum state tomography in a short measurement time. The interference between an unknown and a reference biphoton state is used to retrieve amplitude and phase information through coincidence imaging on a time-stamping camera.

    • Danilo Zia
    • , Nazanin Dehghan
    •  & Ebrahim Karimi

  • News & Views |

    Contrary to intuition, photons do not have to be indistinguishable for maximum photon bunching to occur. Partially indistinguishable photons can exhibit pronounced bunching.

    • Andrea Crespi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The incoherent component of the fluorescence from a single two-level atom is investigated after rejecting the coherent component. Contrary to intuition, its photon statistics experimentally shows strong photon bunching. This result suggests that the atom does in fact simultaneously scatter two photons.

    • Luke Masters
    • , Xin-Xin Hu
    •  & Jürgen Volz

  • Article |

    An inequality is shown to exist between the spectral directional emissivity and absorptivity in a structure supporting a guided-mode resonance coupled to a magneto-optic material. This finding provides the direct observation of the violation of Kirchhoff’s law of thermal radiation.

    • Komron J. Shayegan
    • , Souvik Biswas
    •  & Harry A. Atwater

  • Article |

    Tailoring the composition of organic cations enables manipulating the recombination rates of perovskites. Optimized solution-processed perovskite emitters fabricated on silicon exhibit up to 42.6-MHz modulation bandwidth and 50-Mbps data rate.

    • Aobo Ren
    • , Hao Wang
    •  & Wei Zhang

  • Article |

    This work reports an inverse design approach that can spectrally shape Kerr microcombs by imprinting a nanophotonic dispersion filter to a microresonator to engineer solitonic frequency-comb states in the resonator with an optimization algorithm.

    • Erwan Lucas
    • , Su-Peng Yu
    •  & Scott B. Papp

  • Article |

    Strong coupling of a 2D hole gas in the quantum Hall state dressed with a microcavity mode is studied, showing that tuning the strength of the magnetic field, and therefore the density of states in the system, can select specific spin-dependent light–matter coupling.

    • D. G. Suárez-Forero
    • , D. W. Session
    •  & M. Hafezi

  • Article |

    Two-photon excitation with mid- and near-infrared pulses encodes bond selectivity in fluorescence imaging. Single-molecule imaging and spectroscopy is demonstrated on individual fluorophores as well as various labelled biological targets.

    • Haomin Wang
    • , Dongkwan Lee
    •  & Lu Wei

  • Article |

    A deterministic single-photon two-qubit SWAP gate between polarization and spatial-momentum is demonstrated on a silicon chip. A two-qubit swapping process fidelity of 94.9% is obtained. The coherence preservation of the SWAP gate process is verified by two-photon interference.

    • Xiang Cheng
    • , Kai-Chi Chang
    •  & Chee Wei Wong

  • Article |

    A common belief about boson bunching—fully indistinguishable bosons exhibit the utmost bunching—is theoretically disproved with seven photons of distinct polarization in a seven-mode interferometric process. Enhanced bunching could thus be observed with partially distinguishable photons.

    • Benoit Seron
    • , Leonardo Novo
    •  & Nicolas J. Cerf

  • News & Views |

    The interaction of atoms with intense squeezed light is affected by the quantum noise of the driving field whereby the quantum noise of the squeezed driving field is imprinted in the emitted high harmonics.

    • Paraskevas Tzallas

  • News & Views |

    The sensitivity and bandwidth of force measurements are improved by simultaneously probing the motion of two independent mechanical sensors with entangled light.

    • Giovanni Di Giuseppe
    •  & David Vitali

  • Article |

    Strong-field approximation theory is extended to account for non-classical driving light. This extended theory predicts that ultrafast dynamics of strongly light-driven matter significantly depends on the quantum state of the driving light, particularly on its photon statistics.

    • Matan Even Tzur
    • , Michael Birk
    •  & Oren Cohen

  • Article |

    Propagators of single photons based on directly measuring quantum wave functions are experimentally observed. Classical trajectories that satisfy the principle of least action are successfully extracted in the case of free space and harmonic potential.

    • Yong-Li Wen
    • , Yunfei Wang
    •  & Shi-Liang Zhu

  • News & Views |

    The study of a light‒matter fluid of exciton–polaritons confirms the role of an inverse energy cascade in two-dimensional quantum turbulence.

    • Fabrice P. Laussy

  • News & Views |

    Exceptionally high secret key generation rates of 64 Mbits–1 and 115.8 Mbits–1 over a 10 km optical fibre link have been achieved, thanks to custom-built 14-pixel and 16-pixel superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors, respectively, and the use of fast quantum key distribution transmitters.

    • Davide Bacco
    •  & Maja Colautti

  • Article |

    Joint force measurements with entangled optical probes on two optomechanical sensors are demonstrated. The force sensitivity is improved by 40% in the shot-noise-dominant regime. The sensing bandwidth is improved by 20% in the thermal noise limit.

    • Yi Xia
    • , Aman R. Agrawal
    •  & Zheshen Zhang

  • Article |

    Non-Gaussian Wigner-negative freely propagating optical quantum states are deterministically generated with a 60% photon generation efficiency. An evolution from quadrature squeezing to Wigner negativity is observed by changing the qubit rotation angle.

    • Valentin Magro
    • , Julien Vaneecloo
    •  & Alexei Ourjoumtsev

  • Article |

    An entanglement filter based on Rydberg atoms is demonstrated. It transmits a desired photonic entangled state and blocks unwanted ones. Near-perfect photonic entanglement can be extracted from a noisy input with arbitrarily low initial fidelity.

    • Gen-Sheng Ye
    • , Biao Xu
    •  & Lin Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A graph-theoretical programmable quantum photonic device composed of about 2,500 components is fabricated on a silicon substrate within a 12 mm × 15 mm footprint. It shows the generation, manipulation and certification of genuine multiphoton multidimensional entanglement, as well as the implementations of scattershot and Gaussian boson sampling.

    • Jueming Bao
    • , Zhaorong Fu
    •  & Jianwei Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Researchers demonstrate that the dark saturation current in organic photodiodes is fundamentally limited by mid-gap trap states. This leads to an upper limit for specific detectivity.

    • Oskar J. Sandberg
    • , Christina Kaiser
    •  & Ardalan Armin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Current LiDAR approaches suffer from congestion issues, which affect measurement performance and increased system complexity. Now researchers demonstrate a chaotic microcomb that exhibits congestion-immune naturally orthogonalized light channels.

    • Ruixuan Chen
    • , Haowen Shu
    •  & Xingjun Wang

  • Article |

    A quantum key distribution with a key rate of 115.8 Mb s–1 is demonstrated over 10 km standard optical fibre. To this end, a high-speed and stable system, an integrated transmitter for low error modulation and multipixel superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors are developed.

    • Wei Li
    • , Likang Zhang
    •  & Jian-Wei Pan

  • News & Views |

    X-ray photons emitted by free electrons travelling in van der Waals materials show energy shifts induced by quantum recoil, thus offering a viable route to generating tailored and tunable single X-ray photons.

    • Nahid Talebi

  • News & Views |

    A scheme for converting qubits between two different representations, discrete and continuous variables, paves the way for more-efficient quantum networks.

    • Hyunseok Jeong

  • News & Views |

    Enhancement of laser energy conversion into X-rays is obtained using a target made by entwined carbon nanotubes.

    • Andrea Macchi
    •  & Francesco Pegoraro

  • Article |

    Quantum recoil is experimentally observed via photon energy shifts in Smith–Purcell radiation. Leveraging van der Waals materials as atomic-scale gratings, the quantum recoil is measured at room temperature on a tabletop platform.

    • Sunchao Huang
    • , Ruihuan Duan
    •  & Liang Jie Wong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A terawatt laser filament is shown to be able to guide lightning over a distance of 50 m in field trials on the Säntis mountain in the Swiss Alps.

    • Aurélien Houard
    • , Pierre Walch
    •  & Jean-Pierre Wolf

  • Article |

    Two-dimensional massive and massless Dirac fermions in HgTe/CdHgTe quantum wells yield terahertz Landau emission. The emission frequency is continuously tunable with magnetic field or carrier concentration, over the range from 0.5 to 3 THz.

    • S. Gebert
    • , C. Consejo
    •  & F. Teppe

  • 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

  • News & Views |

    The resonance wavelengths of optical Möbius strip microcavities can be continuously tuned via geometric phase manipulation by changing the thickness-to-width ratio of the strip.

    • Bruno Piccirillo
    •  & Verónica Vicuña-Hernández

  • Article |

    A conversion of quantum information between single-photon and cat-state qubits is demonstrated by teleportation using optical hybrid entanglement. The classical limit of conversion is exceeded over the full Bloch sphere, with an average fidelity above 79%.

    • Tom Darras
    • , Beate Elisabeth Asenbeck
    •  & Julien Laurat

  • 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
    | Open Access

    The existence of the optical Berry phase in all-dielectric Möbius-strip cavities is experimentally confirmed. In contrast to a predicted sole Berry phase value of π, arbitrary values of the Berry phase upon adiabatic evolution of a linearly or elliptically polarized light wave are obtained.

    • Jiawei Wang
    • , Sreeramulu Valligatla
    •  & Oliver G. Schmidt

  • Article |

    A spatially multiplexed detection system of three transition-edge sensors is developed to resolve photon numbers up to 100 in a single laser pulse. Using the detector to measure parity of a coherent state allows for the extraction of quantum random numbers.

    • Miller Eaton
    • , Amr Hossameldin
    •  & Olivier Pfister

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A nonlinear multi-pass cell is shown to be able to shift the central wavelength of a laser by tens of nanometres, offering a new means for control for high-power laser systems

    • Prannay Balla
    • , Henrik Tünnermann
    •  & Christoph M. Heyl

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Researchers demonstrate a laser-plasma accelerator-driven free-electron laser in a seeded configuration, where control over the radiation wavelength and longitudinal coherence are achieved.

    • Marie Labat
    • , Jurjen Couperus Cabadağ
    •  & Marie-Emmanuelle Couprie

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