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An ultrafast electron diffraction facility with an overall temporal resolution of 31 fs root mean square is developed. Even for a charge as high as 0.6 pC, the electron bunch duration and timing jitter are 25 fs and less than 10 fs, respectively.
A high-intensity attosecond X-ray free-electron laser, meeting the demands of attosecond science for research on the sub-femtosecond-timescale quantum-mechanical motion of electrons in molecules and solids, is now available for attosecond pump–attosecond probe experiments in the soft X-ray region.
Time-of-flight 3D imaging is an invaluable remote sensing tool, but raster speeds are currently limited by pulsed-laser scanning rates. By adapting techniques from ultrafast time-stretch imaging, a new LiDAR platform scans orders of magnitude faster than today’s commercial line-scanning pulsed-LiDAR systems.
The use of amplitude-squeezed states of light as a probe is shown to yield superior measurements of the motion of a moving mirror at low frequencies. The demonstration offers a path to improving the sensitivity of gravitational-wave detectors.
The realization of ultrafast integrated opto-optical switches with ultra-low switching energies remains an ongoing challenge. Broadband, silicon-compatible devices relying on gap plasmons and saturable absorption in graphene could pave the way forward.
The behaviour of multi-dimensional excitation dynamics and localization transition is synthesized in one-dimensional lattices formed by planar photonic structures.
Deep-blue high-colour-purity light-emitting materials are developed by using amine-based edge passivation. The light-emitting diodes based on the carbon dots exhibit a maximum luminance of 5,240 cd m–2 and an external quantum efficiency of 4%.
Monolithic photonics devices based on SiC are fabricated by a wafer bonding and thinning technique. The strong enhancement of single-photon emission from a colour centre and optical frequency conversion with an efficiency of 360% W−1 are demonstrated.
Spectral super-resolution spectroscopy is realized by exploiting a random laser that chaotically produces sharply spiked spectral lines, representing a new generation of simple, compact and cost-effective spectroscopy tools.
Programmable linear optical networks are implemented in a multimode fibre. The intermodal coupling between the spatial and polarization modes of the fibre is controlled by wavefront shaping. The network is used to emulate tunable coherent absorption.
The generation of ultrashort X-ray pulses with a peak power exceeding 100 GW offers new opportunities for studying electron dynamics with nonlinear spectroscopy and single-particle imaging.
A scalable solution involving direct wafer-bonding of high-quality, epitaxially grown gallium phosphide to low-index substrates is introduced. The promise of this platform for integrated nonlinear photonics is demonstrated with low-threshold frequency comb generation, frequency-doubled combs and Raman lasing.
The arrival of light-emitting diodes based on new materials is posing challenges for the characterization and comparison of devices in a trusted and consistent manner. Here we provide some advice and guidelines that we hope will benefit the community.