Techniques and instrumentation articles within Nature Photonics

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  • News & Views |

    An optical fibre-fed superconducting electro-optic modulator with gigahertz bandwidth and attojoule per bit electric power consumption offers a fast, efficient means to connect superconducting circuits to the room temperature environment.

    • Paolo Pintus
    • , Mo Soltani
    •  & Galan Moody

  • News & Views |

    A non-common-path interferometric scheme enables holographic detection of single proteins of mass 90 kDa and estimation of single-protein polarizability.

    • Chia-Lung Hsieh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Time-resolved lightwave-driven scanning tunnelling spectroscopy is developed to investigate how the spin–orbit-split energy levels of a selenium vacancy within a WSe2 monolayer shift under phonon displacement. Ultrafast snapshots of the electronic tunnelling spectra reveal transient energy shifts up to 40 meV.

    • C. Roelcke
    • , L. Z. Kastner
    •  & Y. A. Gerasimenko

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Holographic microscopy with independent control of the signal and reference fields enables the holographic imaging of a single protein with mass below 100 kDa and estimation of their polarizability.

    • Jan Christoph Thiele
    • , Emanuel Pfitzner
    •  & Philipp Kukura

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Free-electron homodyne detection allows measuring phase-resolved optical responses in electron microscopy, demonstrated in the imaging of plasmonic fields with few-nanometre spatial and sub-cycle temporal resolutions.

    • John H. Gaida
    • , Hugo Lourenço-Martins
    •  & Claus Ropers

  • Article |

    Super-resolution pMINFLUX microscopy is combined with FRET and enables co-tracking of two fluorophores without photoswitching.

    • Fiona Cole
    • , Jonas Zähringer
    •  & Philip Tinnefeld

  • 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

  • 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

    Spatial-frequency tracking adaptive beacon light-field encoded endoscopy enables imaging through a single multimode fibre under bending and twisting. In vivo imaging with subcellular resolution is demonstrated in mice models.

    • Zhong Wen
    • , Zhenyu Dong
    •  & Qing Yang

  • 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

  • News & Views |

    Two papers in Science demonstrate tracking of the stepping motion of the kinesin motor protein with nanometric spatial precision and sub-millisecond temporal resolution by using MINFLUX, a highly photon-efficient single-molecule localization technique.

    • Fernando D. Stefani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    We show perovskite X-ray detection at zero-voltage bias with operational device stability exceeding one year. Detection efficiency of 88% and noise-equivalent dose of 90 pGyair are obtained with 18 keV X-rays, allowing single-photon-sensitive, low-dose and energy-resolved X-ray imaging.

    • Kostiantyn Sakhatskyi
    • , Bekir Turedi
    •  & Maksym V. Kovalenko

  • Article |

    Researchers engineer double-tapered optical-fibre arrays and use perovskite nanocrystal substrates for X-ray imaging with a three orders of magnitude output gain and spatial resolution of 22 lp mm−1. Arrayed gamma-ray imaging is also demonstrated using a nanocrystal scintillator film.

    • Luying Yi
    • , Bo Hou
    •  & Xiaogang Liu

  • 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

  • Article |

    Linearly polarized orbital angular momentum-carrying hard X-ray beams are induced using spiral Fresnel zone plates. By sending the hard X-ray beams to disordered enantiopure molecular complexes, the helicity-dependent and chiral-sensitive signal is obtained.

    • Jérémy R. Rouxel
    • , Benedikt Rösner
    •  & Majed Chergui

  • 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

  • Article |

    Researchers exploit Rayleigh waves and associated dynamic strains to control exciton transport in the weak coupling regime at room temperature. The findings may pave the way for new types of excitonic device for applications ranging from communications to energy.

    • Kanak Datta
    • , Zhengyang Lyu
    •  & Parag B. Deotare

  • 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 |

    Recent progress in terahertz scanning probe microscopy is reviewed with an emphasis on techniques that access length scales below 100 nm relevant to material science. An outlook on the future of nanoscale terahertz scanning probe microscopy is also provided.

    • T. L. Cocker
    • , V. Jelic
    •  & F. A. Hegmann

  • 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

  • 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

  • Review Article |

    The potential of machine-learning application to the field of ultrafast photonics is reviewed, with key examples including pulsed lasers, and control and characterization of ultrafast propagation dynamics.

    • Goëry Genty
    • , Lauri Salmela
    •  & Sergei K. Turitsyn

  • Review Article |

    Recent improvements of the operation speed of variable optical elements are reviewed with an emphasis on components with microsecond focus-varying response time.

    • SeungYeon Kang
    • , Martí Duocastella
    •  & Craig B. Arnold

  • Article |

    Through the use of a plasmon-active atomically sharp tip and an ultrathin insulating film, and precise junction control in a highly confined nanocavity plasmon field at the scanning tunnelling microscope junction, sub-nanometre-resolved single-molecule near-field photoluminescence imaging with a spatial resolution down to ∼8 Å is achieved.

    • Ben Yang
    • , Gong Chen
    •  & J. G. Hou

  • Article |

    Coherent diffractive imaging using broadband illumination is demonstrated at visible and X-ray wavelengths. The method is based on a numerical monochromatization of the broadband diffraction pattern by the regularized inversion of a matrix.

    • Julius Huijts
    • , Sara Fernandez
    •  & Hamed Merdji

  • News & Views |

    Using a photonic chip to generate the patterns of light needed for structured illumination microscopy could reduce the cost and complexity of super-resolution imaging.

    • Sara Abrahamsson

  • Article |

    By exploiting the electro-optic properties of thin-film lithium niobate, an integrated single-waveguide Fourier transform spectrometer with a footprint of <10 mm2 and an operational bandwidth of 500 nm in the near- and short-wavelength infrared is demonstrated.

    • David Pohl
    • , Marc Reig Escalé
    •  & Rachel Grange

  • News & Views |

    High-efficiency, time-domain, near-infrared fluorophores provide multiplexed colour channels for distinct deep bioimaging.

    • Shoujun Zhu
    •  & Xiaoyuan Chen

  • Article |

    A two-step sequential broadband nanofocusing technique offers an external efficiency of ~50% over nearly all the visible range on a fibre-coupled plasmonic nanowire probe. Its integration with a scanning tunnelling microscope realizes lens-free tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy with 1 nm spatial resolution.

    • Sanggon Kim
    • , Ning Yu
    •  & Ruoxue Yan

  • Letter |

    By time-shifting short-pulse excitation photon energy into prolonged luminescent emission in the time domain, both the number of light signal transducers in sub-15 nm nanoparticles and the near-infrared-in to near-infrared-out conversion efficiency can be maximized, advancing in vivo optical bioimaging.

    • Yuyang Gu
    • , Zhiyong Guo
    •  & Fuyou Li

  • Article |

    By combining a single-photon time-of-flight camera with computational processing of the spatial and full temporal photon distribution data, an object embedded inside a strongly diffusive medium can be imaged over more than 80 transport mean free paths in a contactless manner on the timescale of the order of 1 s.

    • Ashley Lyons
    • , Francesco Tonolini
    •  & Daniele Faccio

  • Letter |

    Double-blind holography allows reconstruction of the missing spectral phases and characterization of the unknown signals in both isolated-pulse and double-pulse scenarios, facilitating the study of complex electron dynamics via a single-shot and linear measurement.

    • O. Pedatzur
    • , A. Trabattoni
    •  & N. Dudovich

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