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By making use of polarization control, researchers have achieved a record 100-nm resolution when imaging buried transistors in an integrated circuit.

The ability to distinguish how many photons comprise a particular state of light leads to significant benefits in practical quantum information processing and quantum cryptography. Superconducting nanostructures provide an effective solution at telecom wavelengths.

This month, the CLEO/QELS conference has a tribute symposium to the famous laser inventor Ted Maiman. Be sure not to miss it.

Polymer materials could bring down the cost of electricity production using photovoltaic technology to below $1 per watt for the first time, and enable mass-market, portable applications for photovoltaic technology.

The photovoltaics industry is growing fast, but it still needs to bring down costs before it can reach its true potential. Nadya Anscombe talks to Winfried Hoffmann, president of the European Photovoltaics Industry Association, to find out more.

Metamaterials have now evolved to a level where their resonant frequency can be optically tuned in the terahertz region. Nature Photonics spoke to Hou-Tong Chen from Los Alamos National Laboratory about the achievement.

Light absorbers are not 100% efficient, and it is a challenge to absorb light completely for any direction of incidence. Using nanostructured metal surfaces, de Abajo and colleagues show that such omnidirectional absorption is now possible, potentially leading to more efficient solar cells.

Optical-frequency antennas efficiently couple light into very small volumes. Introducing an important concept from radiofrequency antenna design, that of loading with so-called lumped circuit elements, may provide a way of tuning the frequency response of optical nanoantennas.

Laser-generated plasmas are important for the creation of X-ray lasers and attosecond light pulses, but observing the internal dynamics of a plasma is difficult. This paper reports a method for real-time imaging of the electric-field distribution in such plasmas with ultrahigh temporal resolution, yielding a new insight into their behaviour

Metamaterials that possess frequency tunability enable new device functions. By external optical control through the incorporation of semiconductors in metallic split-ring resonators, the researchers provide an elegant solution to frequency-agile terahertz metamaterials.

The drive to develop detectors capable of counting the number of photons in a weak optical pulse is motivated by potential applications in quantum computing. Superconducting nanostructures are one exciting approach: offering high sensitivity and operate at repetition rates up to 80 MHz.

Ceramic lasers look poised to make an impact in photonics thanks to the tantalizing possibilities of high output power, ultrashort-pulse generation and cost-effective production.

Single-photon emission is a well-explored process. But in recent years interest in two-photon emission has grown. Nature Photonics spoke to Meir Orenstein and Alex Hayat in Israel about their latest work, which reports two-photon emission in a semiconductor.

Biological processes often involve multimolecular interactions on a nanometre scale or at very large molecular concentrations, making them difficult to visualize. Optical antennas have the potential to become powerful tools for nanobioimaging by enhancing optical fields on this tiny scale.