Volume 16 Issue 8, August 2022

The 2022 Wolf Prize in Physics has been awarded to Paul Corkum, Anne L’Huillier and Ferenc Krausz for their pioneering contributions to ultrafast laser science. Nature Photonics spoke to them about the milestones, challenges and future opportunities for the field.

Co-doping ytterbium and praseodymium ions in photon avalanche nanoparticles rapidly builds up huge optical nonlinearities, enabling confocal microscopy to achieve super-resolution imaging at high speed.

A micropillar cavity that can impart a phase shift to single photons offers a promising route to scalable quantum information processing with light.

Breaking reciprocity at the nanoscale can produce directional formation of images due to the asymmetric nonlinear optical response of subwavelength anisotropic resonators. The self-induced passive non-reciprocity has advantages compared to magnet or time modulation approaches and may impact both classical and quantum photonics.

Although optical communications continue to be the main driver for integrated photonics, new applications are emerging in computing and neural networks. That was the message from this year’s European Conference on Integrated Optics in Milan.

Asymmetric parametric generation of light in nonlinear metasurfaces is enabled by nonlinear dielectric resonators in translucent metasurfaces. Upon infrared illumination, different and independent visible light images are detected for ‘forwards’ versus ‘backwards’ operation.

Giant effective photon–photon interactions are achieved by hybridizing light with excitons in an InGaAs-based quantum well micropillar cavity. Cross-phase modulation of up to 3 mrad per polariton is observed at the laser intensity below the single-photon level.

Linearly polarized orbital angular momentum-carrying hard X-ray beams are induced using spiral Fresnel zone plates. By sending the hard X-ray beams to disordered enantiopure molecular complexes, the helicity-dependent and chiral-sensitive signal is obtained.

X-ray detectors based on dual-site-doped perovskite single crystals exhibit excellent sensitivity of 2.6 × 10⁴ μC Gy_air⁻¹ cm^–2 under a low field of 1 V cm^–1. The detectable dose rate is as low as 7.09 nGy_air s^–1. The operational stability is beyond half a year.

An analogous all-optical Stern–Gerlach experiment is observed in nonlinear optics, where the frequency of light acts as a pseudospin. The deflection depends on the strength of the nonlinear coupling gradient as well as on the relative phase between the different input frequencies.

Efficient perovskite–silicon tandem solar cells with an efficiency of up to 28.6% are reported by employing tribromide ions to reduce charge recombination.

Researchers demonstrate a self-calibrating programmable photonic integrated circuit. The findings may be useful for the accurate control of large-scale photonic integrated circuits in applications such as light-based machine learning.

Researchers demonstrate an integrated mirror-symmetric non-reciprocal device enabled by three coupled photonic resonators. Nearly 40 dB of isolation is achieved at telecommunications wavelengths using 75 mW of radiofrequency power.