Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Optical coherence tomography is a powerful imaging technique. Thanks to work from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this technique just got faster and more powerful, with the potential to advance intricate imaging studies of the human body.
Devices emitting one photon at a time are a key component for quantum applications ranging from secure communication to more efficient computation. Recent advances in semiconductor-based single-photon devices bring such applications closer to reality.
The rapidly improved performance of LEDs based on multilayers of highly luminescent quantum dots could lead to promising applications in next-generation displays and lighting.
Textbooks suggest that heating, caused by phonon emission, is an inevitable and intrinsic by-product of light generation in a Raman laser. Now a design has emerged that reduces the phonon emission and may lead to higher efficiency and smaller devices.
Wavelength converters typically rely on inefficient nonlinear light–matter interactions or electro–optic effects. Researchers in the USA have now demonstrated a low-power and broadband all-optical wavelength shifter, which has the potential to fit on a single optical chip.
Optical tweezers enable precise, controlled and non-contact manipulation of small biological specimens. Rather than using a bulky microscope, it is now possible to create optical tweezers at the end of a fibre probe.
When tiny optical cavities are coupled together on the nanoscale, optical forces can dominate. A new proposal from researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology provides a way of harnessing these forces, leading to microcavities that can mechanically adapt their geometry.
A design of laser-pumped magnetometer that combines the properties of alkali metal atoms with fabrication technology from the semiconductor industry could help realize tiny mass-producible devices with high sensitivity and low power consumption.
Researchers in London have produced a scalable microphotonic chip that can optically detect and address individual atoms. The end result could be atom–photon chips capable of complex, system-level functionality.
Solitons in optical fibres are important in the generation of supercontinuum light. An understanding of the diverse physics that is involved when intense optical pulses propagate along nonlinear fibres will enable the engineering of broad-wavelength sources for a wide range of applications.
Microscopic algae and low-cost forms of solar cell could have more in common than meets the eye. Both could prove important in the quest to produce cleaner, greener fuels.
An electro–optic scheme for sampling the electric field of laser pulses without the need for any synchronization could become a valuable tool for characterizing sources that emit in the infrared and terahertz regions.
Chinese investment in high-intensity ultrashort-pulse generation seems to be paying off with several groups reporting their latest breakthroughs at CLEO/Pacific Rim 2007.
A group at Caltech have used an optical microcavity to perform label-free detection of single molecules for the first time. The work represents a milestone in the application of optical cavities in sensing, and could lead to the realization of ultrasensitive lab-on-a-chip systems.
