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Volume 2 Issue 5, May 2008

Nanostructures that support plasmon resonances enable optimized absorption from any direction.

Cover design by Tom Wilson

Letter by Teperiket al.

Volume 2 Issue 5

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Editorial

  • This month, the CLEO/QELS conference has a tribute symposium to the famous laser inventor Ted Maiman. Be sure not to miss it.

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    Editorial

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Commentary

  • Nanophotonics is in its infancy, but a recently published European roadmap is the first attempt to paint a detailed picture of the industry that could emerge in the future.

    • Amber Jenkins

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    Commentary
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Profile

  • Light Up The World, a non-profit organization founded by optical engineer Dave Irvine-Halliday, is on a mission to bring safe, clean and affordable lighting to impoverished people. Nature Photonics finds out more.

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    Profile
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Research Highlights

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News & Views

  • The ability to tune the resonant frequency of a metamaterial in the terahertz region will help to overcome some of the limitations of customary designs demonstrated so far. The result could be a new breed of active, frequency-agile devices that are controlled by light.

    • Daniel Mittleman

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    News & Views

  • The ability to distinguish how many photons comprise a particular state of light leads to significant benefits in practical quantum information processing and quantum cryptography. Superconducting nanostructures provide an effective solution at telecom wavelengths.

    • Alexander V. Sergienko

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    News & Views

  • Optical antennas are the short-wavelength equivalent of the common radiofrequency structures. Taking this analogy one step further, the design concepts of radiofrequency lumped circuit elements can effectively be transplanted to optical wavelengths.

    • Mark L. Brongersma

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    News & Views

  • Researchers in Germany have shown that an ultrafast electron beam can be used to probe the dynamics of laser-generated plasmas with picosecond resolution.

    • P. B. Corkum

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    News & Views

  • By making use of polarization control, researchers have achieved a record 100-nm resolution when imaging buried transistors in an integrated circuit.

    • Stephen Ippolito

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    News & Views
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Editorial

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Research Highlights

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Industry Perspective

  • Advances at every stage of the manufacturing process are helping to reduce costs in the photovoltaics industry, but there is still a long way to go before photovoltaic cells reach their true potential.

    • Nigel Mason

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    Industry Perspective

  • Multijunction solar cells used in concentrator photovoltaics have enabled record-breaking efficiencies in electricity generation from the Sun's energy, and have the potential to make solar electricity cost-effective at the utility scale.

    • Richard R. King

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    Industry Perspective

  • Polymer materials could bring down the cost of electricity production using photovoltaic technology to below $1 per watt for the first time, and enable mass-market, portable applications for photovoltaic technology.

    • Russell Gaudiana
    • Christoph Brabec

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    Industry Perspective
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Business News

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Product Highlights

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Interview

  • The photovoltaics industry is growing fast, but it still needs to bring down costs before it can reach its true potential. Nadya Anscombe talks to Winfried Hoffmann, president of the European Photovoltaics Industry Association, to find out more.

    • Nadya Anscombe

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    Interview
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Letter

  • Metamaterials that possess frequency tunability enable new device functions. By external optical control through the incorporation of semiconductors in metallic split-ring resonators, the researchers provide an elegant solution to frequency-agile terahertz metamaterials.

    • Hou-Tong Chen
    • John F. O'Hara
    • Willie J. Padilla

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    Letter

  • Light absorbers are not 100% efficient, and it is a challenge to absorb light completely for any direction of incidence. Using nanostructured metal surfaces, de Abajo and colleagues show that such omnidirectional absorption is now possible, potentially leading to more efficient solar cells.

    • T. V. Teperik
    • F. J. García de Abajo
    • J. J. Baumberg

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    Letter

  • It has been known for many decades that tightly focusing light introduces asymmetry. The impact of this on imaging, as is now demonstrated using solid immersion lenses, is that resolution becomes dependent on the polarization of the light.

    • K. A. Serrels
    • E. Ramsay
    • D. T. Reid

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    Letter

  • Laser-generated plasmas are important for the creation of X-ray lasers and attosecond light pulses, but observing the internal dynamics of a plasma is difficult. This paper reports a method for real-time imaging of the electric-field distribution in such plasmas with ultrahigh temporal resolution, yielding a new insight into their behaviour

    • Martin Centurion
    • Peter Reckenthaeler
    • Ernst E. Fill

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    Letter
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Photonics at NPG

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Interview

  • Metamaterials have now evolved to a level where their resonant frequency can be optically tuned in the terahertz region. Nature Photonics spoke to Hou-Tong Chen from Los Alamos National Laboratory about the achievement.

    • Rachel Won

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    Interview
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In This Issue

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Focus

  • Renewable energy is high on the political agenda at the moment.

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