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Exploiting an optical cavity that folds space in time in a conventional lens design provides a novel route for time-resolved imaging and depth sensing.
Individual, light-emitting nanoparticles offer many opportunities for early disease detection. Now, advances towards greatly enhanced brightness are being made using core–multi-shell architectures.
This Review covers recent progress in quantum technologies with optically addressable solid-state spins. A possible path to chip-scale quantum technologies through advances in nanofabrication, quantum control and materials engineering is described.
The parameters and issues that affect the accuracy of fluorescence molecular imaging are discussed and a means for ensuring reliable reproduction of the fluorescence signals in biological tissue is proposed.
Spin-dependent lateral optical forces, 100,000 times larger than those reported so far, can lead to displacements of centimetre-sized objects observable by the naked eye.
The generation of hot electrons in plasmonic nanostructures is of scientific and technological interest, putting the community under pressure to better understand the hot-electron mechanisms and to increase the light conversion efficiency of plasmonic nanosystems for chemical reactions and photodetection.
A chip-based optical frequency comb source has now been successfully used to send 661 Tbit s–1 over 9.6 km of multicore fibre, bringing considerable savings in the energy consumption and size of data transmission equipment.
Valleytronics in single-layer semiconductors is reviewed with an emphasis on controlling the valley degree of freedom with light as well as potential applications.
Efficient photon upconversion is desired for applications ranging from molecular sensing to solar-energy harvesting. Now, the population of hidden triplet state electrons, created on dye antennas and rare-earth-doped nanoparticles, has been amplified to brighten upconversion by five orders of magnitude.
The finding that the quasi-1D crystal BaTiS3 features a large optical anisotropy and a broadband birefringence spanning the infrared is likely to reignite interest in quasi-1D optical materials.
The demonstration of broadband, electrically tunable third-order nonlinear optical responses in graphene is promising for a host of nonlinear optical applications.
The electromagnetic instability associated with a dense, ultra-relativistic electron beam propagating in a thin conductor could offer a new approach to realizing ultra-bright sources of gamma-rays.
