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Silicon photonic circuits offer a promising solution for the interconnect bottleneck for advanced computing systems, but they typically require additional materials, such as germanium for photodetection. An all-silicon receiver capable of handling a data stream at 1.28 terabits per second is paving the way for future optical interconnects.

The field of plasmonics continues to show its potential scientific and technological impact, as new companies exploiting plasmonics beyond sensing applications emerge.

The nonlinear optical response of achiral molecules spread on chiral nanostructured substrates and subjected to circularly polarized light is examined. The experiment is a step towards confirming a long-standing theoretical prediction: hyper-Raman optical activity.

Short-wave infrared photothermal microscopy enables deep-tissue vibrational imaging at millimetre depth with high sensitivity and sub-cellular spatial resolution, offering potential for applications in biological and medical fields.

Terahertz waveforms can now be measured with atomic-scale spatial resolution as a result of a new form of terahertz time-domain spectroscopy that uses tunnelling electrons as an ultrafast, localized probe. The approach paves the way for ultrafast optical surface analysis at the scale of individual molecules or atoms.

The mitigation of climate change requires major transformations in the ways we generate energy and operate technologies that release carbon dioxide. Photonic concepts and novel light-driven technologies provide many potential solutions, transforming our current modes of energy use into more effective and sustainable ones.

Nathalie Picqué, the new director at the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy (MBI) in Berlin, Germany, tells us all we need to know about frequency combs and dual-comb spectroscopy, and shares with us some golden tips on becoming a successful scientist.

Using a gas–solid mixture approach, researchers used a transparent, scintillating nanoporous material for real-time detection of ⁸⁵Kr and ³H, two pure beta emitters. They also simultaneously measure a mixture of them. The broadly applicable approach may be useful for nuclear industry and environmental safeguarding.

The researchers synthesize organic–inorganic hybrid inverse perovskites that exhibit excellent carrier lifetime and mobility–lifetime product and high resistivity, enabling stable X-ray detectors with performance arguably outperforming state-of-the-art perovskite single-crystal detectors.

Highly twisted multi-boron-based multiple-resonance thermally activated delayed fluorescence emitters enable deep-blue organic light-emitting diodes with high colour purity, a narrow full-width at half-maximum of 14 nm and a peak external quantum efficiency of 39.2%.

Based on the acquisition of a multi-spectral reflection matrix at a high frame rate, a fully digital microscope overcomes aberrations and multiple scattering to provide a three-dimensional image of an ex vivo opaque cornea at a resolution of 0.29 μm and 0.5 μm in the transverse and axial directions, respectively.

A direct lead-halide perovskite CT imager has been demonstrated. The detector arrays have 980 μm absorber thickness and exhibit detection quantum efficiency of 80% and noise-equivalent dose of 153 pGy_air.

Using electrostatic doping, the real and imaginary parts of the refractive index along the extraordinary axis of semiconducting, highly aligned, single-walled carbon nanotubes over 4″ wafers can be tuned by up to 5.9% and 14.3% in the infrared at 2,200 nm and 1,660 nm, respectively.

Researchers demonstrate the ambient-condition observation of Floquet states in CdSe nanoplatelets, a colloidal analogue of quantum wells.

The concept of chiral topological light—a polychromatic light with chiral closed 3D polarization trajectories, space-varying with the azimuthal angle—is introduced and used for efficient sensing in chiral molecules, showcasing an example of successful application of topological concepts in optics.

Photon Bose–Einstein condensation is observed in a semiconductor laser, where thermalization and condensation of photons occur using an InGaAs quantum well and an open microcavity. The distinction between regimes of photon Bose–Einstein condensation and conventional lasing are clearly identified.

Bose–Einstein condensation of photons is demonstrated in a large-aperture electrically driven InGaAs vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser diode at room temperature. The observed photon Bose–Einstein condensate exhibits the fundamental transversal optical mode at a critical phase-space density.