Introduction of a diffractive axicon in a pulse shaper enables imparting topological–spectral correlation to ultrafast pulses over 200 nm in the visible region and with topological charges up to 80.

Non-fullerene acceptors open the way to sensitive organic photodetectors for detecting circularly polarized near-infrared light.

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.

By tuning the spatial width, the strength and the frequency of a pump beam in two-dimensional cylindrical microcavities supporting stable, robust photonic snake states, a set of broadband and perfectly synchronized two-dimensional frequency combs can be realized.

To bridge the ultrafast and slow classes of quantum-information-processing systems, a Fresnel time lens is developed by using a wideband electro-optic phase modulator combined with a dispersion element. The single-photon spectral bandwidth is compressed from picosecond to nanosecond timescales.

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.

Benjamin Palmer from Ben-Gurion University in Israel talks to Nature Photonics about the intriguing optical properties found in molecular crystals in the living world. His latest paper on the topic can be found in this issue.

Nature Photonics spoke to Hongjie Dai from Stanford University about bioimaging in the second near-infrared (NIR-II) spectral window and its clinical potential.

In recent decades, progress in developing better nonlinear materials has not been as rapid as wished. Here I propose that this may be explained by considering the simple view of nonlinear optical phenomena as being determined mostly by the length of interaction time between photons and matter. Tentative routes towards improvements in the efficiency of nonlinear optical phenomena are suggested.

Nature Photonics has now integrated the Figshare data repository into its submission system.