Ultrafast photonics articles within Nature Physics

Featured

  • Article |

    Mode locking, which is a common technique to produce short laser pulses, is demonstrated in a topological laser.

    • Christian R. Leefmans
    • , Midya Parto
    •  & Alireza Marandi

  • Article |

    Hole and particle-like quasiparticles of a Mott insulator can pair into excitonic bound states. Now, time-resolved measurements of Sr2IrO4 show signs of an excitonic fluid forming from a photo-excited population of quasiparticles.

    • Omar Mehio
    • , Xinwei Li
    •  & David Hsieh

  • News & Views |

    Two studies of electrons generated from laser-triggered emitters have found highly predictable electron–electron energy correlations. These studies, at vastly different energy scales, may lead to heralded electron sources, enabling quantum free-electron optics and low-noise, low-damage electron beam lithography and microscopy.

    • John W. Simonaitis
    •  & Phillip D. Keathley

  • Article |

    Although massive electrons and massless photons are known to interact, their study has so far been confined to the linear regime. Experiments showing two-photon coherent control of a free-electron matter wave now introduce non-linearities.

    • Maxim Tsarev
    • , Johannes W. Thurner
    •  & Peter Baum

  • Letter |

    Plasmonics allows precise engineering of light–matter interactions and is the driver behind many optical devices. The local observation of a plasmonic quantum wave packet is a step towards bringing these functionalities to the quantum regime.

    • Sebastian Pres
    • , Bernhard Huber
    •  & Tobias Brixner

  • News & Views |

    Long-theorized, non-dispersive de Broglie wave packets have been optically synthesized using classically entangled ring-shaped space-time wave packets in a medium exhibiting anomalous dispersion.

    • Mbaye Diouf
    • , Joshua A. Burrow
    •  & Kimani C. Toussaint Jr.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Multidimensional coherent spectroscopy measurements in iron-based superconductors demonstrate how the coupling between a superconductor and strong light pulses can drive the transition into a non-equilibrium superconducting state with distinct collective modes.

    • L. Luo
    • , M. Mootz
    •  & J. Wang

  • News & Views |

    Manipulating the chirality of electron vortices using attosecond metrology allows the clocking of continuum–continuum transitions, bringing the dream of time-resolved quantum physics a little closer.

    • Jean Marcel Ngoko Djiokap

  • Research Briefing |

    Attosecond charge migration in a neutral molecule has been observed to decohere within approximately 10 fs. However, this does not mean that the electronic coherence is irreversibly lost, as the charge migration is observed to revive after 40–50 fs. These findings have the potential to enable laser control of photochemical processes.

  • Article |

    The nonlinear optical effects underlying many applications are typically weak, but linear dispersion engineering allows the generation of pulses comprising equidistant frequency components, which enhances the effective nonlinearity.

    • Joshua P. Lourdesamy
    • , Antoine F. J. Runge
    •  & C. Martijn de Sterke

  • Perspective |

    The interaction between light and the crystal lattice of a quantum material can modify its properties. Utilizing nonlinear interactions allows this to be done in a controlled way to design specific non-equilibrium functionalities.

    • Ankit S. Disa
    • , Tobia F. Nova
    •  & Andrea Cavalleri

  • News & Views |

    The short lifetime of light-induced superconductivity prevents the measurement of its transport properties. Encouraging this state to stay a little longer in K3C60 allows the observation of vanishing electrical resistance.

    • Anshul Kogar

  • Article |

    Spin currents are generated from an antiferromagnet/heavy-metal heterostructure using optical excitation on picosecond timescales. This will have applications in antiferromagnetic spintronics.

    • Hongsong Qiu
    • , Lifan Zhou
    •  & Peiheng Wu

  • Article |

    This paper shows how lattice distortions induced by a laser pulse can create a ferrimagnetic moment in an antiferromagnet. This mechanism gives a magnetic response that is orders of magnitude larger than using mechanical strain.

    • Ankit S. Disa
    • , Michael Fechner
    •  & Andrea Cavalleri

  • News & Views |

    Speed is of the essence when it comes to signal processing, but electronic switching times have reached a limit. Optically controlled tunnel currents across a nanoscale plasmonic gap could considerably accelerate future nanoelectronic devices.

    • Olga Smirnova

  • Article |

    Mode-locking of lasers can be understood as self-organization, and the three-dimensional case of spatiotemporal mode-locking can described using attractor dissection theory, which helps develop an intuition for this complex case.

    • Logan G. Wright
    • , Pavel Sidorenko
    •  & Frank W. Wise

  • Article |

    Single-cycle interferometric autocorrelation measurements of electrons tunnelling across the gap of a plasmonic bowtie antenna and quantitative models provide insight into the physical interactions that drive the electron transfer.

    • Markus Ludwig
    • , Garikoitz Aguirregabiria
    •  & Daniele Brida

  • Letter |

    A transient topological response in graphene is driven by a short pulse of light. When the Fermi energy is in the predicted band gap the Hall conductance is around two conductance quanta. An ultrafast detection technique enables the measurement.

    • J. W. McIver
    • , B. Schulte
    •  & A. Cavalleri

  • Article |

    A spectroscopic study of strontium titanate provides a method for transferring the vibrational energy of a low-frequency phonon mode to higher-frequency modes, with the potential to access elusive ‘silent’ modes.

    • M. Kozina
    • , M. Fechner
    •  & M. C. Hoffmann

  • Review Article |

    This Review surveys recent efforts at understanding and characterizing generation of high harmonics from solid-state materials.

    • Shambhu Ghimire
    •  & David A. Reis

  • Editorial |

    The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded for advances in laser physics that have conferred a formidable benefit to humankind — on both fundamental and applied fronts.

  • Letter |

    The demonstration of substantially enhanced high-harmonic emission from a silicon metasurface suggests a route towards novel photonic devices based on a combination of ultrafast strong-field physics and nanofabrication technology.

    • Hanzhe Liu
    • , Cheng Guo
    •  & David A. Reis

  • Letter |

    Light fields of energy comparable to the Coloumb field that binds valence electrons in atoms generate states where nearly free electrons oscillate in the laser field. These are now shown to exist in rare gases, acting as gain for laser filamentation.

    • Mary Matthews
    • , Felipe Morales
    •  & Misha Ivanov

  • Letter |

    Attosecond light pulses are used to probe ultrafast processes. The experimental observation of attosecond electron pulses now promises the marriage of these techniques with electron microscopy and diffraction.

    • Yuya Morimoto
    •  & Peter Baum

  • Article |

    Ultrashort high-intensity laser pulses change the properties of dielectrics in different ways. One unexpected outcome is light amplification in an excited dielectric, observed in a two-colour pump–probe experiment.

    • Thomas Winkler
    • , Lasse Haahr-Lillevang
    •  & Thomas Baumert

  • News & Views |

    Light beams with controllable orbital angular momentum can be generated in the extreme-ultraviolet or soft-X-ray regime, pushing the application of twisted light to the nanoscale.

    • Carlos Hernández-García

  • Letter |

    Photoemission is usually driven by the energy of the illuminating laser pulses, but in the strong-field regime, the photoemission from an array of plasmonic nanoparticles is shown to be controlled by the light’s electric field.

    • William P. Putnam
    • , Richard G. Hobbs
    •  & Franz X. Kärtner

  • Letter |

    Observations of high-harmonic generation from a single layer of a transition metal dichalcogenide opens the door to studying strong-field and attosecond phenomena in two-dimensional materials.

    • Hanzhe Liu
    • , Yilei Li
    •  & David A. Reis

  • News & Views |

    By exploiting the optical Stark effect, the valley degree of freedom in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides can be selectively manipulated and detected using all-optical methods.

    • Xiaoqin Li
    •  & Galan Moody

  • News & Views |

    Micro-explosions triggered by the absorption of X-ray laser light in drops and jets of water result in shock waves and in rapid heating and expansion of the liquid — as now revealed in state-of-the-art experiments.

    • Susan Davis Allen

  • Letter |

    Valleys in momentum space provide a degree of freedom that could be exploited for applications. A demonstration of valley pseudospin control now completes the generation–manipulation–detection paradigm, paving the way for valleytronic devices.

    • Ziliang Ye
    • , Dezheng Sun
    •  & Tony F. Heinz

  • Letter |

    Using a technique inspired by Ramsey spectroscopy it is now possible to coherently control free electrons in an electron microscope.

    • Katharina E. Echternkamp
    • , Armin Feist
    •  & Claus Ropers

  • Article |

    X-ray-induced explosions in water drops, examined using time-resolved imaging, show interacting high-speed liquid and vapour flows. This type of X-ray absorption dynamics is predictable and may be used for inducing particular dynamical liquid states.

    • Claudiu A. Stan
    • , Despina Milathianaki
    •  & Sébastien Boutet

  • News & Views |

    A movie of ultrafast electron dynamics driven by lightwaves shows that wide-bandgap semiconductors could form the building blocks of petahertz electronic devices.

    • Oliver D. Mücke

  • Letter |

    Experiments showing that electron dynamics can be controlled on attosecond timescales suggest that wide-bandgap semiconductors could be exploited for petahertz signal processing technologies.

    • Hiroki Mashiko
    • , Katsuya Oguri
    •  & Hideki Gotoh

  • Research Highlights |

    • Iulia Georgescu

  • Letter |

    An interferometric measurement based on high-harmonic generation now provides direct access to the electron wavefunction during field-induced tunnelling.

    • O. Pedatzur
    • , G. Orenstein
    •  & N. Dudovich

  • News & Views |

    Light has long been used to detect the chirality of molecules but high-order harmonic generation now provides access to these chiral interactions on ultrafast timescales.

    • Minhaeng Cho

  • Letter |

    Molecules that are mirror images of each other usually behave identically, unless they are interacting with other chiral objects. High-harmonic generation can provide access to the dynamics of chiral interactions on ultrafast timescales.

    • R. Cireasa
    • , A. E. Boguslavskiy
    •  & V. R. Bhardwaj

  • Article |

    Understanding the physical mechanisms of photon–atom interactions on ultrafast timescales is challenging, but a new theoretical framework enables the interpretation of attoclock experiments measuring tunnelling times in hydrogen.

    • Lisa Torlina
    • , Felipe Morales
    •  & Olga Smirnova

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