Volume 6 Issue 11, November 2012

Confinement and enhancement of light by plasmonics allows a high density of independent subwavelength sensor elements to be constructed in micrometre-sized arrays. It is relatively straightforward to integrate those sensors into microfluidics chips, making plasmonic structures promising for use in next-generation modern biosensors.

Joachim Krenn was one of the early pioneers of modern surface plasmon optics, and has almost 8,000 citations to his work. Nature Photonics spoke to Krenn about the field's origins.

The application of chirped pulse amplification may overcome existing drawbacks of X-ray lasers and could lead to intensities that rival large free-electron-laser facilities.

Instead of using light to study mechanical motion, scientists have now demonstrated the use of mechanics to probe light, using an excitonic optomechanics coupling that paves the way to the implementation of cavity-free optomechanics.

An innovative quantum network design that uses light–matter interfaces to process individual light quanta may ultimately allow quantum communication at high rates and over long distances without the need for long-lived quantum memories.

The use of a new measure of what it means for a system to be quantum has profound technological and philosophical ramifications for the field of quantum information processing.

From metamaterials to biophotonics, the scope and number of topics discussed at this year's Photon conference shows that UK photonics research is as active and diverse as ever.

Surface plasmon polaritons have become popular because of their sub-wavelength confinement and the possibility to perform ultrasensitive optical measurements. This article reviews the development of active plasmonic devices and new metrologies using hybrid multilayer structures combining with the magnetic, acoustic and ultrafast effects.

One of the main features of plasmonics is the possibility to locally enhance the intensity of electromagnetic fields. This enables strong non-linear optical effects in structures with metal inclusions, including metamaterials. This Review discusses nonlinear effects in plasmonic structures and presents an overview of applications and limitations.

Many researchers hope to merge plasmonics and graphene photonics to combine their useful features. The properties and characteristics of plasmons on graphene are reviewed. Prospects for possible future applications are discussed.

The mechanism by which various species of silvery fish produce almost perfect broadband, polarization-neutral reflections is revealed. The answer lies with the use of multilayers composed of two types of birefringent guanine crystals, which each have their extraordinary and ordinary refractive indices orientated in different directions.

Researchers describe a path towards 5 × 10¹⁴ fully coherent soft X-ray photons in 200 fs pulses reaching 20 GW peak power. The proposed amplification scheme is based on seeding stretched high harmonics using a transposition of Chirped Pulse Amplification to soft x-rays.

Researchers demonstrate a chip-scale optomechanical accelerometer with displacement read-out using a photonic crystal cavity integrated with a tethered nanogram test mass of high mechanical Q-factor. The device achieves an acceleration resolution of 10 µg Hz^−1/2 for sub-mW optical power, a bandwidth greater than 20 kHz, and a dynamic range of 50 dB.

By using qubit recycling, researchers demonstrate a scalable version of Shor's algorithm in which the total number of qubits is one third of that required in the standard protocol. They experimentally implemented a two-photon compiled algorithm to factor N = 21, pointing to larger-scale implementations of Shor's algorithm.

Researchers propose a design of quantum communication based on directly transmitting quantum information in encoded form across a network. Involving no teleportation, the scheme does not require entangled links between nodes and long-lived quantum memories. It potentially provides higher communication rates than existing entanglement-based schemes.

By considering a resonator lattice in which the coupling constants between the resonators are harmonically modulated in time and by controlling the spatial distribution of the modulation phases, scientists introduce a scheme that can generate an effective magnetic field for photons, without the use of magneto-optical effects.

Researchers experimentally demonstrate an upconversion system for field-deployable mid-infrared spectral imaging. The system provides a room-temperature dark noise of 0.2 photons per spatial element per second — a billion times below the dark noise level of cryogenically cooled cameras — and a quantum efficiency of 20%.

Silvery fish have evolved an elegant optical scheme for overcoming the Brewster effect, creating broadband, polarization-neutral reflections for any angle of incidence. Nicholas Roberts explained to Nature Photonics how and why they do it.

Plasmonics takes advantage of the coupling of light to charges like electrons in metals, and allows breaking the diffraction limit for the localization of light into sub-wavelength dimensions enabling strong field enhancements. This Focus Issue covers some of the recent developments in the field including, non-linear plasmonics, acousto-magneto effects, plasmons on graphene and bio-sensor applications.