Browse Articles

Activity in using photonics for subsea wireless communications and power generation is starting to make waves.

The laser community returned to Prague to celebrate science and to be connected, in person, again, while high-power lasers were in the limelight.

A diffractive axicon (a device that diffracts the input light pulse radially) enables complex correlations between the topological charges and the frequencies of ultrashort laser pulses, resulting in a variety of ultrashort coiled light structures.

Researchers have developed efficient electro-optic tools for manipulating the time and frequency of single photons by taking inspiration from Fresnel lenses.

The introduction of a two-step deconvolution workflow maximizes the detection of fluorescence in fluctuation-based super-resolution imaging, enabling a square millimetre field of view to be captured in as little as ten minutes.

Researchers demonstrated coherent dissipative Kerr solitons with a conversion efficiency exceeding 50% and good line spacing stability. The results may facilitate practical implementation of a scalable integrated photonic architecture for energy-efficient applications.

The authors discuss the opportunities and challenges facing underwater photovoltaics.

Inefficient filters and overall efficiency are issues for display technology. Luminescent concentrator pixels have been used with CdSe/CdS quantum dot emitters, which enable both colour and polarization filtering, as well as nearly 41% extraction efficiency.

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.

Attosecond transient reflectivity spectroscopy, in combination with extensive time-dependent density functional theory calculations, is used to study field-driven carrier injection in germanium in the time window of few femtoseconds around pulse overlap, paving a route towards achieving full optical control over charge carriers in semiconductors.

The use of clone combs provides very high-capacity radio-over-fibre data transmission with high-order modulation formats.

Optics is now going beneath the waves to give remote-operated vehicles and divers fast optical wireless data links. Nature Photonics spoke with Boon Ooi from KAUST, a leading researcher into underwater photonics research.

A low-loss cavity is shown to store X-ray laser pulses for >2.8 μs.

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.

Intraband electroluminescence (EL) from n-doped core–shell HgSe–CdSe colloidal quantum dots is observed around the wavelength of 5 µm. The measured EL quantum efficiency is 4.5% at the injection current of 2 A cm⁻², benefiting from the cascade effect. The power efficiency is 0.05%.

A transmission electron microscopy technique enables movies of optical near-fields to be recorded with a temporal resolution faster than the oscillation of optical electric fields.

A new approach enables handwriting high-performance perovskite optoelectronic devices with a common ballpoint pen on diverse substrates, including paper, textiles, plastics, rubber and common 3D objects in daily life.

Nanoplasmonic antennas enable label-free monitoring of bacterial enzymes released via outer membrane vesicles. Real-time monitoring reveals the oscillatory behaviour of enzymatic release from individual bacteria as well as the effects of coupled oscillation from neighbouring bacteria.