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Advances in the understanding of optical skyrmions, within a unified topological framework, are reviewed. The field structure of such optical quasiparticles, and their topological characteristics, may be useful for fields ranging from imaging to quantum technologies.
The progress made in developing light-emitting technologies that are wearable, attachable or implantable is reviewed and potential applications and challenges are discussed.
A coherent microwave-to-optical conversion scheme, previously feasible only under cryogenic environments, has now been expanded to ambient conditions by using Rydberg atoms.
Modelling shows how plasma density gradients can be tailored to compress optical pulses in the final stages of laser systems towards exawatt (1018 W) peak powers.
A large-angle twist between two bilayer graphene films makes a sensitive and broadband infrared–terahertz detector as a result of interlayer screening and a crystal field-induced bandgap.
This Review covers a comparison between various label-free biomedical imaging techniques, their advantages over label-based methods and relevant applications.
A scheme for fast, comprehensive characterization of high-dimensional quantum states could aid quantum applications in imaging and information processing.
Combining photoacoustic excitation with optomechanics enables the mechanical modes associated with entire microorganisms to be detected, demonstrating that mechanical spectroscopy allows us to identify microorganisms and characterize their life stages.
New conductive and perovskite inks enable hand-drawing of optoelectronic devices with a ballpoint pen on a variety of daily substrates, including paper, textiles and other irregular surfaces.
Photonics enables the design of ultrafast, energy-efficient computing approaches for artificial intelligence, and key to the scalability of such approaches is photonics integration.
Since the inception of the idea of temporal solitons in optical fibres, published in 1973, the concept of optical solitons has revolutionized the fundamental science of optics and photonics technologies. This Perspective gives an outlook on the future of solitons in ultrafast lasers, frequency combs, biomedical applications, telecommunications and signal processing, as well as the emerging new science of solitons.
Event-based detectors, which respond to local changes in light intensity rather than producing images, enable super-resolution single-molecule localization microscopy with sensitivity and resolution comparable to conventional methods.
The demonstration of a low-loss diamond mirror cavity that can temporally store X-ray pulses brings hope for a future generation of X-ray free electron lasers.
Platforms enabling control over strong light–matter interactions in optical cavities provide a challenging but promising way to manipulate emergent light–matter hybrids. Spin selectivity of transitions has now been demonstrated in a two-dimensional hole gas microcavity system, paving the way towards the study of new spin physics phenomena in hybrid excitations.
