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Programmable photonic arrays with <10 fW (per unit) standby power consumption, <40 pJ (per unit) reconfiguration energy and <11 V programming voltages are demonstrated.

Self-configuring meshes of integrated Mach–Zehnder interferometers determine the optimal communication channels through unknown optical media, with the resulting modes showing crosstalk below –30 dB.

An electrically tunable device that can work as an optical switch, an optical limiter with a tunable limiting threshold and a nonlinear optical isolator with a tunable operating range in the mid-infrared range is realized by combining a gold layer with subwavelength square slits and a layer of VO₂.

This Review covers a comparison between various label-free biomedical imaging techniques, their advantages over label-based methods and relevant applications.

Researchers demonstrate nonlinear wavelength converters whose output wavelengths are controlled with high accuracy by bandgap-protected wavenumber selectivity. Output frequencies are continuously tuned by nearly 300 GHz without compromising efficiency.

Photonic processors are promising candidates for solving tough mathematical problems. Nature Photonics asked Yoshihisa Yamamoto, director of the Physics and Informatics Laboratories at NTT Research in USA, about the progress that is being made in realizing coherent Ising machines (CIMs).

By implanting ¹¹⁷Sn, a fibre-packaged nanophotonic diamond waveguide with optically addressable hyperfine transitions separated by 452 MHz is demonstrated. This enables the formation of a spin-gated optical switch and achieving a waveguide-to-fibre extraction efficiency of 57%.

Researchers propose a laser pulse compression method for exawatt to zettawatt lasers based on spatially varying dispersion of an inhomogeneous plasma. This may enable, for example, pulse compression of a laser pulse from 2.35 ps to 10.3 fs. The approach is robust at high intensities.

Three-dimensional nonlinear optical metamaterials are realized by directly engineering the symmetries of electronic wavefunctions at the atomic scale by stacking individual two-dimensional van der Waals interfaces into a precisely designed three-dimensional configuration.

Vladimir Zakharov was a man of a strong passion and grand intellect, who was equally and deservedly proud of both his scientific achievements and his poetry.

We posit that inconsistent interpretations of experimental data have led to inaccurate claims on metalens focusing efficiencies. By performing a meta-analysis, we show that extraordinary claims of high focusing efficiency at high numerical apertures are, unfortunately, not yet backed by rigorous simulation or experimental results.

The 2023 Nobel prizes in physics and chemistry have been awarded to important discoveries and developments in photonics-related research.

A scheme for fast, comprehensive characterization of high-dimensional quantum states could aid quantum applications in imaging and information processing.

Allen Weeks, Director General of the Extreme Light Infrastructure European Research Infrastructure Consortium, talks to Nature Photonics about the founding and future of the high-power-laser facilities, and stimulating a resurgence of physics in new EU member countries.

Combining photoacoustic excitation with optomechanics enables the mechanical modes associated with entire microorganisms to be detected, demonstrating that mechanical spectroscopy allows us to identify microorganisms and characterize their life stages.

New conductive and perovskite inks enable hand-drawing of optoelectronic devices with a ballpoint pen on a variety of daily substrates, including paper, textiles and other irregular surfaces.

Photonics enables the design of ultrafast, energy-efficient computing approaches for artificial intelligence, and key to the scalability of such approaches is photonics integration.

Since the inception of the idea of temporal solitons in optical fibres, published in 1973, the concept of optical solitons has revolutionized the fundamental science of optics and photonics technologies. This Perspective gives an outlook on the future of solitons in ultrafast lasers, frequency combs, biomedical applications, telecommunications and signal processing, as well as the emerging new science of solitons.