Nanophotonics and plasmonics articles from across Nature Portfolio

A decade ago, the anti-laser made waves as a new type of perfect absorber that functions as a one-way trap door for light. Experiments have now demonstrated the control of light without absorbing it.

Higher-order topological phase appears as a pioneering topic, and together with the non-Hermiticity, brings broad attentions recently. The authors explore the interplay between the non-Hermiticity and hierarchical topological states in a non-reciprocal framework and show the flexible reconstruction of non-Hermitian higher-order topological states.

Highly-directional hyperbolic surface plasmons are widely exploited in optoelectronic devices, but obtaining the same performance in simpler platforms over metahyperbolic surfaces has technological advantages for integration. The authors predict that RuOCl₂ monolayers exhibit low-loss hyperbolic responses across the THz to UV spectral range.

The usual treatment of wave scattering theory relies on a formalism that does not easily allow for probing optimal spectral response. Here, the authors show how an alternative formalism, encoding fundamental principles of causality and passivity, can be used to make sense of complex scattered fields’ structures.

Phonon polaritons are promising for infrared applications while it is difficult to tune the phonon polariton properties. Here, authors report a thermal and electrostatic tuning of surface phonon polaritons in heterostructures of LaAlO3/SrTiO3.

Programmable photonic arrays with <10 fW (per unit) standby power consumption, <40 pJ (per unit) reconfiguration energy and <11 V programming voltages are demonstrated.

The Airy-Talbot effect is experimentally demonstrated for spoof surface acoustic waves in a structured metasurface. Owing to its self-imaging and self-healing properties, the authors achieve robust multipath transmission of nonperiodic signals.

A decade ago, the anti-laser made waves as a new type of perfect absorber that functions as a one-way trap door for light. Experiments have now demonstrated the control of light without absorbing it.

Vibrations of individual molecules are difficult to detect due to thermal noise. In a recent report, researchers overcome this challenge, upconverting mid-infrared photons into visible light using nanophotonic cavities. The result is high-efficiency optical readout for single-molecule vibrational spectroscopy.

Inspired by valley pseudospins in two-dimensional materials, high-quality-factor (high-Q) spin–valley states were created through the photonic Rashba-type spin splitting of a bound state in the continuum. This approach enabled the construction of a coherent and controllable spin-optical laser using monolayer-integrated spin–valley microcavities without requiring magnetic fields or cryogenic temperatures.

Measuring the transmission matrix of disordered structures has so far been limited to the domain of linear systems. Now it has been measured for nonlinear disorder, with exciting implications for information capacity.