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Researchers report a solid-state laser containing metasurfaces that generates a 10 × 10 array of phase-locked optical vortices with tunable orbital angular momentum.
Non-Abelian braiding, an essential process for realizing topological quantum computation, is implemented using an array of photonic integrated waveguides.
Non-reciprocal physical systems exhibit direction-dependent propagation of light, enabling a myriad of devices such as diodes and circulators. A new experiment demonstrates non-reciprocal amplification of light via atomic spins, driving photons on a one-way street through optical nanofibres.
The local polarization of light in nanophotonic waveguides changes with the light’s direction of propagation. By electrically controlling the polarization of optically created waveguide-coupled excitons in a two-dimensional semiconductor, researchers demonstrate voltage-controlled routing of photons in an integrated nanophotonic device.
A record-breaking microwave-to-optics conversion efficiency of 82% over a 1 MHz bandwidth for low photon numbers is achieved by using a gas of Rydberg atoms, paving the way towards applications in quantum technologies.
Weak interaction of light with matter makes its tunable control notoriously challenging, resulting in bulky and inefficient devices. Now, a study demonstrates that van der Waals antiferromagnets featuring strong spin-charge induced anisotropy could offer excellent control of light polarization selectivity.
Harnessing birefringence in a photonic chip featuring an array of coupled waveguides brings new opportunities for investigating quantum effects such as bunching and antibunching.
A liquid crystal doped with a diarylethene enantiomer can be switched by light into stable reflection states of different colour, creating new opportunities for lasing and labelling.
Directional control of the diffusion of excitons is desired for excitonic devices, but being neutrally charged they can’t be transported by applying a bias voltage as for conventional electronic transport. It is now shown that surface acoustic waves can direct the flux of excitons over micrometre distances, even at room temperature.
Nanoscale helix-shaped structures of CdTe are shown to exhibit strong nonlinear chiral effects that could prove useful for high-throughput chemical analysis.
Researchers reveal an effect in random media, called coherent back-emission, in which directional memory of the incoming light field persists after incident radiation ceases to be present.
An off-the-shelf silicon image sensor can directly record few-cycle optical waveforms in the mid-infrared in a single shot by employing tunnelling ionization as a temporal gate.
