Optics and photonics articles within Nature Communications

Featured

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The microscopic origin and valley physics of quantum emitters (QEs) in 2D semiconductors are still not fully understood. Here, the authors report an anomalous magneto-optical behaviour of QEs in WSe2 monolayers coupled to chiral plasmonic nanocavities, suggesting the absence of intrinsic valley symmetry of the emitters.

    • Longlong Yang
    • , Yu Yuan
    •  & Xiulai Xu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The bulk photovoltaic effect (BPVE) is a nonlinear optical effect offering a promising approach to overcome the limitations of conventional photovoltaics. Here, the authors report the observation of BPVE-induced photocurrents at the edges of 2D semiconductors embedded in various van der Waals heterostructures.

    • Zihan Liang
    • , Xin Zhou
    •  & Xiaolong Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Determining earthquake faulting orientation is essential for understanding earthquake-stress interactions. Here, the authors present a technique that leverages telecom fiber optic cables to improve the estimation of this fundamental parameter.

    • Jiaxuan Li
    • , Weiqiang Zhu
    •  & Zhongwen Zhan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Direct visualization of the chemical dynamics of surfaces in solution is essential to gain mechanistic insights into nanocatalysis and electrochemistry. Here, the authors demonstrate the imaging of dynamic interfacial changes on a single nanowire during chemical reactions using azimuthally modulated plasmonic scattering interferometry.

    • Gang Wu
    • , Chen Qian
    •  & Xian-Wei Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Traditional optical microscope, while bulky, often fails to deliver optimal performance. Here, the authors have engineered an integrated microscope of 0.15 cm3 in volume and a weight of 0.5 g, which outperforms a commercial microscope and can be seamlessly integrated with a smartphone.

    • Yuanlong Zhang
    • , Xiaofei Song
    •  & Qionghai Dai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hydrodynamically coupled rotors can be used to describe interactions ranging from molecular machines to atmospheric dynamics. Modin et al. show that optically-driven rotors in a non-tweezing beam can freely diffuse while spinning asynchronously and develop an analytical hydrodynamic model to explain.

    • Alvin Modin
    • , Matan Yah Ben Zion
    •  & Paul M. Chaikin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hyperbolic phonon polaritons (HPhPs) in anisotropic van der Waals materials hold promise for nanophotonic applications, but their far-field characterization remains challenging. Here, the authors demonstrate the application of Raman spectroscopy in a backscattering configuration to determine the dispersion of HPhPs in thin GaSe crystals.

    • Alaric Bergeron
    • , Clément Gradziel
    •  & Sébastien Francoeur

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pump-probe spectroscopy is a versatile technique to explore ultrafast dynamics on the femtosecond timescale. Here the authors report a pump-probe experiment and quantum modeling combined study revealing dynamics of collective polaritonic states that are formed between a molecular photoswitch and plasmonic nanoantennas.

    • Joel Kuttruff
    • , Marco Romanelli
    •  & Nicolò Maccaferri

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fano resonant optical coatings (FROCs) present an ideal platform for structural coloring from thin-film metamaterials. This platform provides full-color gamut coverage at greater than 61% of the CIE gamut, with exceptionally high purity (up to 99%) and high brightness. FROCs exhibit tunable iridescence, cost-effective and scalable manufacturing, and significant advantages over existing structural coloring schemes.

    • Mohamed ElKabbash
    • , Nathaniel Hoffman
    •  & Chunlei Guo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Single-shot readout of optically active spin qubits is typically limited by low photon collection rates and measurement back-action. Here the authors overcome these limitations by using an open cavity approach for single-shot readout of a semiconductor quantum dot and demonstrate record readout time of a few ns.

    • Nadia O. Antoniadis
    • , Mark R. Hogg
    •  & Richard J. Warburton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors present a fast mid-infrared hyperspectral chemical imaging technique that uses chirped pulse upconversion of sub-cycle pulses at the image plane, with lateral resolution of 15 µm and an adjustable field of view and large spectral range. They demonstrate identification and mapping different components in a microfluidic device, plant cell, and mouse embryo.

    • Yue Zhao
    • , Shota Kusama
    •  & Takao Fuji

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors report the scalable integration of electroluminescent semiconducting carbon nanotubes between nanographene electrical contacts in photonic crystal cavities, showing high coupling efficiency and dynamic electrical control of the enhanced electroluminescent light emission intensity in the telecom range.

    • Anna P. Ovvyan
    • , Min-Ken Li
    •  & Wolfram H. P. Pernice

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A metasurface is used to generate a hybrid grafted perfect vector vortex beam, which can be dynamically controlled with a half waveplate. The beam has spatially variant rates of polarization change due to the involvement of more topological charges.

    • Hammad Ahmed
    • , Muhammad Afnan Ansari
    •  & Xianzhong Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Photonic crystals (PhCs) are artificial periodic materials that can be used to manipulate the flow of light. Here, the authors report the realization of asymmetric PhCs based on in-plane hyperbolic phonon polaritons in perforated α-MoO3, showing low-symmetry deep-subwavelength Bloch modes that are robust against lattice rearrangement in specific directions.

    • Jiangtao Lv
    • , Yingjie Wu
    •  & Qingdong Ou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The emergence of relaxation in unitarily evolving systems can be seen as a paradox, but not once the distinction between local and global dynamics is considered. Here, the authors use photons in an integrated optical interferometer to show that, for a system evolving unitarily on a global level, single-mode measurements converge to those of a thermal state.

    • F. H. B. Somhorst
    • , R. van der Meer
    •  & J. J. Renema

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Exciton-polaritons are part-light part-matter states in semiconductors. Here the authors leverage momentum-resolved optical microscopy to image ballistic and diffusive propagation of exciton-polaritons on femtosecond scales.

    • Ding Xu
    • , Arkajit Mandal
    •  & Milan Delor

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There are different quantum algorithms developed for the security of current cryptographic concepts. Here the authors demonstrate a method to perform quantum-secured digital payments using unforgeable quantum cryptograms over an optical fiber link and verify the information-theoretic security.

    • Peter Schiansky
    • , Julia Kalb
    •  & Philip Walther

  • Article
    | Open Access

    “Due to the inherent disorder and fluidity of water, machining of water through laser cutting is challenging. Here, authors report a strategy through laser cutting to realize the machining of nanoparticle encased water pancakes with the depth of water at sub-millimeter level.”

    • Jicheng Niu
    • , Wenjing Liu
    •  & Fei Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Most non-line-of-sight imaging requires scanned illumination, limiting applicability for dynamic scenes. Here the authors exploit occlusion and a sensor array to estimate locations and sizes of moving foreground objects and a static background map.

    • Sheila Seidel
    • , Hoover Rueda-Chacón
    •  & Vivek K Goyal

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The optical field inside a nanophotonic particle accelerator is revealed. To this end, the authors developed a field imaging technique for spatial and spectral resolution on the nanometer scale.

    • Tal Fishman
    • , Urs Haeusler
    •  & Ido Kaminer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Gratings are used for pulse compression and stretching in chirped pulse amplification (CPA) or optical parametric CPA methods. Here the authors demonstrate ultra-broadband gold gratings that can compress single-cycle pulses with powers around 100 petawatts.

    • Yuxing Han
    • , Zhaoyang Li
    •  & Jianda Shao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Exciton-polariton condensates are hybrid systems with nonlinear interactions. Here the authors demonstrate metamaterials with inter-site polariton coupling and asynchronous locking of light fluids from neighbor sites at the energy detuning.

    • D. L. Chafatinos
    • , A. S. Kuznetsov
    •  & A. Fainstein

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This report describes a 3D microelectrode array integrated on a thin-film flexible cable using traditional thin-film processing techniques and direct laser writing of 3D structures at micron resolution via two-photon lithography for neural recording.

    • Morgan A. Brown
    • , Kara M. Zappitelli
    •  & Timothy J. Gardner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Optoacoustic super-resolution at millimeter-scale depths has been impeded by the strong background absorption from blood cells. Here, the authors use dichloromethane microdroplets with high optical absorption and demonstrate 3D microangiography of the mouse brain via optoacoustic localization.

    • Xosé Luís Deán-Ben
    • , Justine Robin
    •  & Daniel Razansky

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors develop a deep learning-based incoherent holographic camera system in order to deliver visually enhanced holograms in real-time. The neural network filters the noise in the captured holograms, and by integrating a holographic camera and a display, they demonstrate a holographic streaming system.

    • Hyeonseung Yu
    • , Youngrok Kim
    •  & Hong-Seok Lee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The easy preparation of high efractive index transparent polymers is highly desirable owing to their interesting optoelectronic applications. Here, the authors apply an organobase catalyzed polymerization of bromoalkynes and dithiophenols to produce sulfur-containing all organic high refractive index polymers with excellent optical transparency.

    • Jie Zhang
    • , Tianwen Bai
    •  & Ben Zhong Tang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Lithium niobate plays an important role in integrated photonics, but its widespread application requires a reliable solution. Here, the authors present a wafer-scale approach to LNOI integration via wafer bonding to silicon nitride PICs.

    • Mikhail Churaev
    • , Rui Ning Wang
    •  & Tobias J. Kippenberg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Compact atomic clocks and atom interferometers are desired for on-chip integration. Here the authors demonstrate a chip-scale atomic beam of 87Rb atoms and its application as an atomic beam clock

    • Gabriela D. Martinez
    • , Chao Li
    •  & William R. McGehee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors demonstrate that the atomic motion induced by broadband laser pulses in a single graphene nanoribbon (GNR) can be tracked by femtosecond coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy (CARS) when performed in a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM).

    • Yang Luo
    • , Alberto Martin-Jimenez
    •  & Klaus Kern

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A microwave-rate soliton microcomb whose repetition rate can be modulated at 75 MHz. Moreover, the repetition rate can be locked to an external microwave reference by direct injection locking or feedback locking without external modulation.

    • Yang He
    • , Raymond Lopez-Rios
    •  & Qiang Lin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bound-states-in-the-continuum (BICs) display unique features like symmetry protection from dissipation, long lifetimes and topological charges. Here the authors demonstrate anisotropic Bogoliubov excitation spectrum of polariton condensate from a BIC using a patterned semiconductor GaAs/AlGaAs waveguide.

    • Anna Grudinina
    • , Maria Efthymiou-Tsironi
    •  & Nina Voronova

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phase change materials (PCMs) are promising for low-power programmable photonic circuits. Here, authors show electrically controlled wide-bandgap PCM antimony sulfide achieving low loss, high cyclability and up to 32 levels, and post-fabrication trimming is also demonstrated.

    • Rui Chen
    • , Zhuoran Fang
    •  & Arka Majumdar

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors report a simple strategy to enable ultrahigh-Q guided-mode resonances by introducing a patterned perturbation layer on top of a multilayer-waveguide system. Such high-Q resonances are experimentally demonstrated with measured Q-factors up to 2.4 × 105.

    • Lujun Huang
    • , Rong Jin
    •  & Andrey E. Miroshnichenko

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pump-probe spectroscopy is routinely used to interrogate ultrafast valence electronic and vibrational dynamics in complex systems. Here, the authors extend this technique to the X-ray regime using a sequence of femtosecond X-ray pulses to understand core-valence interactions in a solvated molecular complex.

    • Robert B. Weakly
    • , Chelsea E. Liekhus-Schmaltz
    •  & Munira Khalil

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Infrared polarization-sensitive photodetectors are attractive owing to their widespread applications. Here, the authors report a long-wave infrared photodetector with an ultrahigh polarization sensitivity by leveraging the 1D geometry of Tellurium nanoribbon and the finite-size effect of a perfect plasmonic absorber.

    • Mingjin Dai
    • , Chongwu Wang
    •  & Qi Jie Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phonons are the collective excitations of the lattice of a material, and can, in the case of chiral phonons, carry angular momentum, allowing for strong coupling to the magnetic properties of the material. Here, Cui, Bostrom and co-authors observe chiral magnon polarons, the hybridized quasiparticles of chiral phonons and magnons, in the van der Waals antiferromagnet FePSe3.

    • Jun Cui
    • , Emil Viñas Boström
    •  & Qi Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Squeezed light allows for quantum-enhanced, sub-shot-noise sensing, but its generation and use on a chip has so far remained elusive. Here, the authors fill this gap by demonstrating a thin-film lithium-niobate-based integrated quantum optical sensor, which beats shot-noise-limited SNR by ~ 4%.

    • Hubert S. Stokowski
    • , Timothy P. McKenna
    •  & Amir H. Safavi-Naeini

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors present a moving-parts-free approach for visualizing soliton motion in optical cavities that lifts the wavelength and speed constraints of contemporary pulsed laser diagnostic techniques.

    • Łukasz A. Sterczewski
    •  & Jarosław Sotor

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Silica glass is a high-performance material used in most branches of society from glassware and windows to optical lenses and fibers. Here, we develop a sintering-free method for 3D printing silica glass with sub-micrometer resolution and successfully demonstrate an optical microtoroid resonator.

    • Po-Han Huang
    • , Miku Laakso
    •  & Frank Niklaus

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Coherent Stokes Raman scattering (CSRS) has never been explored previously for chemical imaging due to a strong fluorescence background. Here, the authors demonstrate the first fluorescence-free CSRS laser scanning microscope and predict CSRS’ unique backscattering properties.

    • Sandro Heuke
    •  & Hervé Rigneault

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors propose for the first time the concept of supervised-evolving learning (SEL) and a corresponding SEL-driven adaptive focusing (SELAF) system. This metasurface can adaptively realize focusing at any specified position for waves incident from any direction. This work demonstrates unprecedented potential for tasks involving real-time, fast and complex electromagnetic wave manipulation.

    • Huan Lu
    • , Jiwei Zhao
    •  & Hongsheng Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Traditional 2D cell culture platforms do not accurately reflect the physiology of human tumors. Here, authors combine bioprinting and high-speed live cell interferometry with machine learning to measure drug sensitivity at single-organoid resolution in a label-free manner.

    • Peyton J. Tebon
    • , Bowen Wang
    •  & Alice Soragni

Browse broader subjects

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Optics and photonics across other nature.com journals