Applied optics articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Optical filters are an integral part of many optical devices and circuits. Here, Magden et al. use a design based on mode evolution to demonstrate CMOS-compatible dichroic filters with more than an octave bandwidth, sharp roll-off and transmissive short- and long-wavelength outputs

    • Emir Salih Magden
    • , Nanxi Li
    •  & Michael R. Watts

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Conventional distributed Brillouin sensing allows real-time sampling at high spatial resolution, but is so far restricted to measuring quantities inside the fibre core. Here, Chow et al. demonstrate a distributed forward Brillouin sensor that is sensitive to quantities outside the fibre bulk.

    • Desmond M. Chow
    • , Zhisheng Yang
    •  & Luc Thévenaz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Distributed fibre sensors are so far restricted to the monitoring of conditions within the core. Here, Bashan et al. introduce distributed optomechanical mapping of outside media, where light cannot reach. The sensor resolves forward stimulated Brillouin scattering through Rayleigh back-scatter.

    • Gil Bashan
    • , Hilel Hagai Diamandi
    •  & Avi Zadok

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Continued device miniaturization and feasibility of integrating two-dimensional materials into circuits have enabled flexible and transparent optoelectronic memories. Here, the authors show a WSe2–hBN-based heterostructure memory with switching ratio of ~1.1 × 106, ensuring over 128 distinct storage states and retention time of ~4.5 × 104 s.

    • Du Xiang
    • , Tao Liu
    •  & Wei Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Countering the optical network ‘capacity crunch’ requires developments in optical fibres. Here, the authors report a hollow-core fibre with conjoined tubes in the cladding and a negative-curvature core shape. It exhibits a transmission loss of 2 dB/km at 1512 nm and less than 16 dB/km bandwidth in the 1302–1637 nm range.

    • Shou-fei Gao
    • , Ying-ying Wang
    •  & Pu Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The utility of nanowires for all-optical operation has been limited by a lack of coupling scheme with band selectivity. Here, the authors introduce a nanowire geometric superlattice that allows controlled, narrow-band guiding in silicon nanowires through direct coupling of a Mie resonance with a bound guided state.

    • Seokhyoung Kim
    • , Kyoung-Ho Kim
    •  & James F. Cahoon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Orbital-angular-momentum (OAM) beams have great potential for multiplexing signals in optical communication, but creating a compact source is challenging. The authors integrate a chip-scale optical vortex emitter and DFB laser into a single monolithic device for direct electrically pumped production of OAM beams.

    • Juan Zhang
    • , Changzheng Sun
    •  & Siyuan Yu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phase-sensitive amplifiers are known for low-noise amplification and nonlinearity mitigation, but their long-haul implementation is challenging. The authors use these amplifiers to show a long-haul optical link with a 5.6-times reach improvement over conventional amplifier performance, affirming their viability as an alternative technology.

    • Samuel L.I. Olsson
    • , Henrik Eliasson
    •  & Peter A. Andrekson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    For future ultrafast opto-electronic circuits, optical signals must be interfaced with coherent electronic signals. The authors develop asymmetric plasmonic nanojunctions that convert fs light pulses to THz electronic transients that can propagate on-chip for up to a mm, enabling such an interface.

    • Christoph Karnetzky
    • , Philipp Zimmermann
    •  & Alexander Holleitner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Producing versatile radio-frequency chirped waveforms often requires complicated techniques. The authors use a fiber-optic frequency-shifting loop to create a low-complexity photonic chirp generator with high bandwidth and fully flexible properties for application in radar, spectroscopy, and imaging.

    • Hugues Guillet de Chatellus
    • , Luis Romero Cortés
    •  & José Azaña

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Advanced photonic probes are important for the development of non-contact wafer-scale testing of photonic chips. Here, Vynck et al. develop a quantitative technique based on mapping of transmittance variations by ultrafast perturbations to analyze arbitrary linear multi-port photonic devices.

    • Kevin Vynck
    • , Nicholas J. Dinsdale
    •  & Otto L. Muskens

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Manipulating the properties of artificial graphene systems without changing the lattice has proven difficult. Here, Mann et al. theoretically show that changing the photonic environment alone can modify the fundamental properties of emergent massless Dirac polaritons in honeycomb metasurfaces.

    • Charlie-Ray Mann
    • , Thomas J. Sturges
    •  & Eros Mariani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The study of parity-time (PT) symmetric optical systems has recently attracted much attention. Here, the authors experimentally study an anti-PT symmetric circuit system and observe an exceptional point with an inverse PT symmetry breaking transition and energy-difference conserving dynamics.

    • Youngsun Choi
    • , Choloong Hahn
    •  & Seok Ho Song

  • Article
    | Open Access

    To circumvent the limitations of electronic computers, moving to hybrid optical-electronic or all-optical devices may be useful. Here, Babaeian et al. present an all-optical implementation of the probabilistic graphical model using nonlinear optics in thin films to implement mathematical functions.

    • Masoud Babaeian
    • , Pierre-A. Blanche
    •  & N. Peyghambarian

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ordinary materials have their index ellipsoids centered at zero momentum. The authors propose a metamaterial of interpenetrating wire meshes whose connectivity can be used to control the number and position of index ellipsoids at arbitrary nonzero k-points. This could provide a new platform for broadband functionality.

    • Wen-Jie Chen
    • , Bo Hou
    •  & C. T. Chan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Integrating optical and electrical components for communication systems is challenging due to the differences of scale. The authors have developed an on-chip light-to-electrical wireless link between a nanoantenna and an optical rectifier, envisioned as a solution for future integrated wireless interconnects.

    • Arindam Dasgupta
    • , Marie-Maxime Mennemanteuil
    •  & Alexandre Bouhelier

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Indirect excitons, composed of a spatially separated electron and hole, could find applications in excitonic devices for signal processing and communication, however they are normally detected at low temperatures. Here, the authors observe room-temperature indirect excitons in van der Waals transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructures.

    • E. V. Calman
    • , M. M. Fogler
    •  & A. K. Geim

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In optoelectronic oscillators used to produce chirps for radar or communications, low phase noise usually comes at a cost of slow tuning due to mode-building time. The authors use Fourier-domain mode locking to break this limitation and enable fast-tunable chirp production for microwave photonics.

    • Tengfei Hao
    • , Qizhuang Cen
    •  & Ming Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Upconversion nanoparticles, which convert lower-energy light into higher-energy light, have many potential applications including sensing and imaging. Here, Wen et al. review recent advances that have addressed concentration quenching and enabled increasingly bright nanoparticles, opening up their full potential.

    • Zhen Shen
    • , Yan-Lei Zhang
    •  & Chun-Hua Dong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nonreciprocal optical elements mostly rely on magnetic fields to break time-reversal symmetry, an approach that is difficult to integrate on-chip. Here, Ruesink et al. describe and demonstrate 4-port circulation at telecom wavelengths using a magnetic-field-free optomechanical resonator.

    • Freek Ruesink
    • , John P. Mathew
    •  & Ewold Verhagen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Thermal imaging of a sample simultaneously with standard microscopy often requires complex modifications to the microscope. Here, Zhao et al. design a simple non-Hermitian structure that can be coated onto a glass slide where exceptional-point enhanced thermal sensing enables this capability.

    • Han Zhao
    • , Zhaowei Chen
    •  & Liang Feng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Optics that have no rotational or translation symmetry, termed freeform, have the potential to make well-corrected compact optical systems. Here, Bauer et al. approach the design of freeform optics with aberration theory and present general guidelines to design and optimize physically realizable systems.

    • Aaron Bauer
    • , Eric M. Schiesser
    •  & Jannick P. Rolland

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dark-pulse combs may be useful for coherent communications since they display high power conversion efficiency. Here, the authors report the first demonstration of coherent wavelength division multiplexing using dark pulse microresonator combs high signal-to-noise while maintaining a low on-chip pump power.

    • Attila Fülöp
    • , Mikael Mazur
    •  & Victor Torres-Company

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mid-IR optics can require exotic materials or complicated processing, which can result in high cost and inferior quality. Here the authors report the demonstration of high-efficiency mid-IR transmissive lenses based on dielectric Huygens metasurface, showing diffraction limited focusing and imaging performance.

    • Li Zhang
    • , Jun Ding
    •  & Juejun Hu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Oblivious transfer is a standard primitive for cryptography between two parties which do not trust each other. Here, the authors propose a continuous-variable protocol which is secure against a dishonest party with bounded quantum storage capacity, and realize a proof-of-principle implementation.

    • Fabian Furrer
    • , Tobias Gehring
    •  & Stephanie Wehner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bragg gratings are versatile elements used to perform spectral filtering in optical circuits. Here, the authors develop a scalable, reconfigurable grating device which can be electrically tuned to actively change its behaviour and control of optical pathways, for use in photonic signal processing.

    • Weifeng Zhang
    •  & Jianping Yao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Atomically thin monolayers with high photoluminescence quantum yield are promising for optoelectronic and lighting applications. Here, the authors fabricate a transient-mode electroluminescent device to bypass the requirement of ohmic contacts for electrons and holes, and observe millimetre-scale light emission from a transparent 2D display.

    • Der-Hsien Lien
    • , Matin Amani
    •  & Ali Javey

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Scalable solutions for data regeneration of multiple parallel channels are elusive. Here the authors report a scalable wavelength-division multiplexing technique for phase regeneration and demonstrate the highest reported number of regenerated wavelength-division multiplexed channels in a single phase regenerator.

    • Pengyu Guan
    • , Francesco Da Ros
    •  & Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quantum light sources operating at telecom wavelength are a long-sought goal for quantum technologies. Here, the authors show electrically injected emission of single photons and entangled photon pairs from indium phosphide based quantum dots, operating up to a temperature of 93 K.

    • T. Müller
    • , J. Skiba-Szymanska
    •  & A. J. Shields

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Conventional refractive elements are bulky, thick and offer limited active tunability. Here, the authors demonstrate MEMS-based tunable metasurface doublets with more than 60 diopters change in the optical power upon a 1-micron movement of a membrane with one of the metasurface elements.

    • Ehsan Arbabi
    • , Amir Arbabi
    •  & Andrei Faraon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plasmon rulers can be used for resolving ultrasmall material changes. Here, the authors show how cavity plasmons in a metal nanowire-on-mirror setup can be used to probe vertical dimensional changes with sub-picometer differential resolution using two carefully chosen material systems.

    • Wen Chen
    • , Shunping Zhang
    •  & Hongxing Xu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors show that integration of metamaterial and optical fibre technologies enables all-optical XOR, NOT and AND logical functions that are performed at up to 40 gigabits per second with few femtojoules per bit energy consumption within a coherent fully fiberized network.

    • Angelos Xomalis
    • , Iosif Demirtzioglou
    •  & Nikolay I. Zheludev

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Magnetic resonance imaging derives its contrast from local magnetic fields, however the connection between these fields and macroscale contrast has not been established through direct experiments. Here, Davis et al. use diamond magnetometry to map local magnetic fields within mammalian cells with sub-micron resolution and predict macroscale contrast.

    • Hunter C. Davis
    • , Pradeep Ramesh
    •  & Mikhail G. Shapiro

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the electromagnetic responses at subwavelength scales is important for achieving tunability. Using a combination of the near-field and far-field spectroscopy, the authors demonstrate a heavy fermion metamaterial with tunable dual-band optical responses by selectively and separately modifying the 4f and 5d band electrons.

    • Stephanie N. Gilbert Corder
    • , Xinzhong Chen
    •  & Mengkun Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fully integratable spectrometers have trade-offs between size and resolution. Here, the authors present a nano-opto-electro-mechanical system where the functionalities of transduction, actuation and detection are fully integrated, resulting in an ultra-compact high-resolution spectrometer with a micrometer-scale footprint.

    • Žarko Zobenica
    • , Rob W. van der Heijden
    •  & Andrea Fiore

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Longitudinal imaging of bone marrow would shed insight into long-term cellular dynamics within this compartment. Here, the authors develop a multi-photon imaging approach for the mouse femur and reveal extensive vascular plasticity within the bone marrow during bone healing and steady-state homeostasis.

    • David Reismann
    • , Jonathan Stefanowski
    •  & Raluca A. Niesner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Diffusive light propagation represents a valuable additional tool for integrated photonic technologies. As an example, here the authors experimentally demonstrate optical equalisation of coherent light propagating in a femtosecond laser written circuit which simulates a dissipatively-coupled quantum chain.

    • Sebabrata Mukherjee
    • , Dmitri Mogilevtsev
    •  & Natalia Korolkova

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hemispherical format has been adopted in camera systems to better mimic human eyes, yet the current designs rely on complicated fabrications. Here, Zhang et al. show an origami-inspired approach that enables planar silicon-based photodetector arrays to reshape into concave or convex geometries.

    • Kan Zhang
    • , Yei Hwan Jung
    •  & Zhenqiang Ma

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The detection of terahertz and millimeter waves has many applications, but there are still limitations in their technical performance. Here, Tong et al. demonstrate the direct detection of long-wavelength radiation through surface plasmon excitation and a corresponding improvement in detection performance.

    • Jinchao Tong
    • , Wei Zhou
    •  & Dao Hua Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Modulation of airway surface liquid pH has been proposed as a therapy for cystic fibrosis, but whether pH is indeed altered in cystic fibrosis is controversial. Here, the authors develop a novel fibre-optic based pH measurement technology, and show that pH is not altered in children with cystic fibrosis.

    • André Schultz
    • , Ramaa Puvvadi
    •  & Stephen M. Stick

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Micro-electromechanical systems fabrication techniques are based on silicon micromachining processes, resulting in rigid and low aspect ratio structures. Here the authors demonstrate a flexible, high aspect ratio micro-electromechanical system in fibre enabled by an electrostrictive ferrorelaxor terpolymer layer.

    • Tural Khudiyev
    • , Jefferson Clayton
    •  & Yoel Fink

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The phenomenon of wave mixing is expected to show peculiar features when scaled down to the quantum level. Here, the authors show how coherent electromagnetic waves propagating in a 1D transmission line with an embedded two-level artificial atom are mapped into a quantised spectrum of narrow peaks.

    • A. Yu. Dmitriev
    • , R. Shaikhaidarov
    •  & O. V. Astafiev

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Frequency-stable laser systems are important for many applications, like optical communications, that require high precision and low noise. Here, Idjadi and Aflatouni demonstrate that the widely used Pound-Drever-Hall technique can be fully integrated on-chip, miniaturizing the stabilization setup.

    • Mohamad Hossein Idjadi
    •  & Firooz Aflatouni

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