Techniques and instrumentation articles within Nature Photonics

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  • Letter |

    A soft X-ray ptychography approach can now image 5-nm-sized objects. Chemical component distributions in the delithiation of LiFePO4 nanoplates — a process relevant for energy storage — links structural defects to chemical phase propagation.

    • David A. Shapiro
    • , Young-Sang Yu
    •  & Howard A. Padmore

  • Interview |

    A burst-mode camera developed in Japan called STAMP with a femtosecond frame rate could become a powerful tool for studying ultrafast dynamics. Nature Photonics asked Keiichi Nakagawa about the technique.

    • Noriaki Horiuchi

  • Letter |

    A single-shot burst camera has been developed that can generate motion pictures without performing repetitive measurements. It has a frame rate of 4.4 trillion frames per second and a high pixel resolution of 450 × 450 pixels, making it a powerful tool for observing difficult-to-reproduce or non-repetitive events in real time.

    • K. Nakagawa
    • , A. Iwasaki
    •  & I. Sakuma

  • News & Views |

    Marrying the single-molecule detection ability of surface-enhanced Raman scattering with the extreme time resolution of ultrafast coherent spectroscopy enables the vibrations of a single molecule to be observed.

    • Lukasz Piatkowski
    • , James T. Hugall
    •  & Niek F. van Hulst

  • Article |

    Through shaping of colloidal particles, optical traps with prescribed force–displacement profiles are generated and are used to design a microscopic constant-force spring capable of delivering a constant piconewton-scale restoring force for displacements of several micrometres. Potential future applications include the imaging of sensitive biological membranes.

    • D. B. Phillips
    • , M. J. Padgett
    •  & S. H. Simpson

  • Letter |

    Simultaneous detection of electric and magnetic fields with a subwavelength resolution is achieved by a near-field scanning approach. Additionally, theoretical considerations provide guidelines for designing probes sensitive to specific desired combinations of electric- and magnetic-field components.

    • B. le Feber
    • , N. Rotenberg
    •  & L. Kuipers

  • Letter |

    Two-, three- and higher multiphoton absorption processes are shown to occur in amyloid protein fibres, which are thought to play a role in various diseases, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. The nonlinear optical behaviour of such proteins may also be useful for fabricating photonics devices.

    • Piotr Hanczyc
    • , Marek Samoc
    •  & Bengt Norden

  • Article |

    A miniature spectrometer has been developed that employs light scattering in a photonic chip with a random structure. It generates wavelength-dependent speckle patterns, which are detected and analysed to recover the spectrum of the input signal. It has a resolution of 0.75 nm in the 1,500 nm wavelength region.

    • Brandon Redding
    • , Seng Fatt Liew
    •  & Hui Cao

  • Article |

    By employing monocrystalline semiconductor materials as high-quality optical coatings, the long-standing challenge of minimizing the optical phase noise produced by Brownian motion in a multilayer has been overcome. A thermally limited noise floor consistent with a tenfold reduction in mechanical damping relative to that in the best dielectric multilayers is achieved.

    • Garrett D. Cole
    • , Wei Zhang
    •  & Markus Aspelmeyer

  • Letter |

    An ultrafast terahertz (THz) scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) with subpicosecond time resolution and nanometre spatial resolution has been developed. THz pulses are coupled to the metal tip of a commercial STM and THz-pulse-induced tunnelling is observed in the STM. The THz-STM can directly image ultrafast carrier capture by a single InAs nanodot.

    • Tyler L. Cocker
    • , Vedran Jelic
    •  & Frank A. Hegmann

  • Letter |

    A quantum cascade laser with a wall-plug efficiency of up to 50% is experimentally realized when operated at low temperatures and in pulsed mode. The high-efficiency performance is achieved by implementing an ultrastrong coupling between the injector and active regions.

    • Peter Q. Liu
    • , Anthony J. Hoffman
    •  & Claire F. Gmachl

  • Letter |

    A mid-infrared quantum cascade laser that emits more light than heat and features a high wall-plug efficiency of up to 53% when operated a temperature of 40 K is reported. The device utilizes a single-well injector design.

    • Yanbo Bai
    • , Steven Slivken
    •  & Manijeh Razeghi

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