Physical sciences articles within Nature Photonics

Featured

  • News & Views |

    Nanofabricated strained photonic crystals in silicon platforms enable the formation of photonic Landau levels at telecommunication wavelengths, with broad potential applications for enhanced light–matter interactions on-chip.

    • Mahmoud Jalali Mehrabad
    •  & Mohammad Hafezi

  • News & Views |

    Ultrafast optical experiments using narrow-bandwidth tunable IR laser pulses enable nonvolatile all-optical switching of ferroelectric polarization in BaTiO3 in the epsilon-near-zero regime.

    • Vasily V. Temnov
    •  & Paolo Vavassori

  • Obituary |

    We had all been wondering “where is Costas?” and now we learned that we shall not see him again. We have lost a good friend and leader in the photonics community.

    • Maria Kafesaki
    • , Thomas Koschny
    •  & Martin Wegener

  • News & Views |

    Advancements in laser-driven ceramic phosphors yield a high-power broadband near-infrared light source which suits applications in next-generation spectroscopy.

    • Xiao-Jun Wang

  • Article |

    Owing to spectral long-range correlation, broadband energy can be delivered to extended targets deep inside a multiple-scattering system, greatly broadening the scope of controlling wave transport in disordered systems.

    • Rohin McIntosh
    • , Arthur Goetschy
    •  & Hui Cao

  • Article |

    A terahertz-driven photogun with field gradients of 3 GV m−1 is demonstrated by using a few microjoules of single-cycle terahertz radiation. The emitted electrons are accelerated up to 14 keV and can be focused down to 90 μm. The electron bunch is further compressed to 167 fs.

    • Jianwei Ying
    • , Xie He
    •  & Dongfang Zhang

  • Obituary |

    Andrew M. Weiner, a luminary in ultrafast optics and quantum photonics passed away on February 13, 2024, at the age of 65. He will be remembered for his profound contributions to the optics and photonics community, engineering, education, and for his devoted mentorship. He leaves behind a legacy of innovation and inspiration.

    • Jason D. McKinney
    • , Joseph M. Lukens
    •  & Vladimir M. Shalaev

  • Q&A |

    A ring laser gyroscope, located at the Geodetic Observatory Wettzell in Southern Germany, measures variations in the Earth’s rotation. Nature Photonics spoke to a key researcher on the project, Ulrich Schreiber, about the system’s birth, teething issues, and how it may one day probe the El Niño effect.

    • David Pile

  • News & Views |

    Manipulating extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light is notoriously challenging owing to the lack of efficient light modulators. Quantum materials with properties controllable by light may provide an answer.

    • Hermann A. Dürr

  • Article |

    Super-stealth laser cutting with nanometre precision and aspect ratios of the order of 1,000 is demonstrated. The technique is applicable to a broad variety of transparent solids, including silica, lithium tantalate, lithium niobate, YAG, Ce:YAG, Ti:sapphire and β-Ga2O3.

    • Zhen-Ze Li
    • , Hua Fan
    •  & Hong-Bo Sun

  • News & Views |

    Sub-cycle confinement and control of phase transitions in strongly correlated materials are theoretically demonstrated, potentially providing a way to investigate electron dynamics on timescales previously unattainable with these materials.

    • Eleftherios Goulielmakis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A quantum-dot laser directly grown on silicon that is scalable, low cost with an intrinsic linewidth of 16 Hz when subject to feedback from a low-quality-factor external cavity is reported.

    • Bozhang Dong
    • , Yating Wan
    •  & John E. Bowers

  • News & Views |

    Holographic waveguides using shallow etching of silicon-on-insulator waveguides makes designing integrated, preset optical vector matrix multiplication computationally tractable and commercially available.

    • Daniel Brunner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Electrochemical control of the switching of fluorophores in stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (EC-STORM) enables the counting of single fluorophores as well as cell imaging with improved spatial resolution and reduced artefacts compared with traditional STORM.

    • Ying Yang
    • , Yuanqing Ma
    •  & J. Justin Gooding

  • Article |

    Wide-field mid-infrared photothermal imaging is developed to supress the resolution degradation caused by photo-thermal heat diffusion. By employing a single-objective synthetic-aperture imaging with synchronized subnanosecond mid-infrared and visible light sources, spatial resolution of 120 nm is obtained.

    • Miu Tamamitsu
    • , Keiichiro Toda
    •  & Takuro Ideguchi

  • Review Article |

    This Review discusses the physics of nonreciprocal radiation and Kirchhoff’s law generalization in the context of nanophotonics-enabled nonreciprocal thermal applications.

    • Shuihua Yang
    • , Mengqi Liu
    •  & Cheng-Wei Qiu

  • Article |

    Researchers demonstrate a germanium/silicon avalanche photodiode gain–bandwidth product over 1 THz operating at 1,550 nm wavelength. The findings have implications for future high-speed optoelectronic devices in next-generation optical interconnects.

    • Yang Shi
    • , Xiang Li
    •  & Xinliang Zhang

  • News & Views |

    An optical fibre-fed superconducting electro-optic modulator with gigahertz bandwidth and attojoule per bit electric power consumption offers a fast, efficient means to connect superconducting circuits to the room temperature environment.

    • Paolo Pintus
    • , Mo Soltani
    •  & Galan Moody

  • News & Views |

    A non-common-path interferometric scheme enables holographic detection of single proteins of mass 90 kDa and estimation of single-protein polarizability.

    • Chia-Lung Hsieh

  • News & Views |

    Ultrasound-induced luminescence in trianthracene derivative-based nanoparticles enables tumour imaging and immunological profiling in a variety of in vivo models.

    • Cheng Xu
    •  & Kanyi Pu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The strong dispersion of surface phonon polaritons in silicon carbide films is exploited to tailor the orbital angular momentum of phonon polaritons, achieving reconfigurable polaritonic optical vortices that are attractive for orbital-angular-momentum-enabled light–matter interactions at mid-infrared frequencies.

    • Andrea Mancini
    • , Lin Nan
    •  & Stefan A. Maier

  • Article |

    Microring-based vortex combs with each comb line carrying a distinct orbital angular momentum generate light springs with time-varying orbital angular momenta.

    • Bo Chen
    • , Yueguang Zhou
    •  & Jin Liu

  • Article |

    Nonlinear microring resonators can generate a vortex soliton microcomb, that is, a frequency comb with each comb line carrying a distinct orbital angular momentum.

    • Yanwu Liu
    • , Chenghao Lao
    •  & Qi-Fan Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A versatile cloud-accessible single-photon-based quantum computing machine is developed, which shows a six-photon sampling rate of 4 Hz over weeks. Heralded generation of a three-photon Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger state—a key milestone toward measurement-based quantum computing—is implemented.

    • Nicolas Maring
    • , Andreas Fyrillas
    •  & Niccolo Somaschi

  • Article |

    Researchers focused hard X-rays from a free-electron laser down to transverse dimensions of ~7 nm × 7 nm, enabling a two-order increase in intensity of photons and yielding access to the elusive 1022 W cm−2 regime. Such intense, short-wavelength electromagnetic radiation may probe atomic, molecular and optical physics with extremely high resolution.

    • Jumpei Yamada
    • , Satoshi Matsuyama
    •  & Kazuto Yamauchi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Time-resolved lightwave-driven scanning tunnelling spectroscopy is developed to investigate how the spin–orbit-split energy levels of a selenium vacancy within a WSe2 monolayer shift under phonon displacement. Ultrafast snapshots of the electronic tunnelling spectra reveal transient energy shifts up to 40 meV.

    • C. Roelcke
    • , L. Z. Kastner
    •  & Y. A. Gerasimenko

  • Article |

    Kerr resonators can support a new form of parametrically driven temporal cavity soliton (and associated optical frequency comb), with potential performance advantages that include background-free operation and the possibility of very high pump-to-comb conversion efficiencies.

    • Grégory Moille
    • , Miriam Leonhardt
    •  & Miro Erkintalo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Holographic microscopy with independent control of the signal and reference fields enables the holographic imaging of a single protein with mass below 100 kDa and estimation of their polarizability.

    • Jan Christoph Thiele
    • , Emanuel Pfitzner
    •  & Philipp Kukura

  • News & Views |

    The frequency of coherent terahertz waves radiated from a single superconducting emitter can be electronically modulated on a chip with up to 40 GHz bandwidth, paving the way for high-data-rate and ultrafast terahertz wireless communications.

    • Kaveh Delfanazari

  • Meeting Report |

    Metasurfaces bring miniaturization and new avenues for the generation, manipulation and measurement of quantum light.

    • David Pile

  • News & Views |

    Brillouin light scattering anisotropy microscopy affords single-shot collection of angle-resolved phonon dispersion, enabling the mapping of mechanical anisotropies in living matter with a frequency resolution of 10 MHz and a spatial resolution of 2 µm.

    • Yogeshwari S. Ambekar
    •  & Giuliano Scarcelli

  • News & Views |

    A photonic equivalent to disclination in crystals has been used to produce orbital angular momentum laser light directly on-chip, ushering in compact and efficient twisted-light lasers.

    • Andrew Forbes

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Physical sciences across other nature.com journals