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Picosecond all-optical switching of the polarization of visible light is achieved by using the anisotropy and nonlinearity of a hyperbolic metamaterial.
A nanocryostat is realized through the refrigeration of levitated Yb3+:YLF nanocrystals to 130 K using anti-Stokes fluorescence cooling, while the laser polarization allows orientation control of the trapped nanocrystal and maximizes its cooling.
Electronic–plasmonic transducers made from metal–insulator–metal junctions are demonstrated. The plasmon sources are coupled efficiently to plasmonic waveguides and could be used in integrated nanophotonic applications.
Exploiting Einstein’s theory of general relativity, the curved space associated with specially designed nanophotonic structures is shown to be able to manipulate light propagation.
Donor dye nanoparticles have been used to realize structures that are 25 times brighter than quantum dots. This enabled single-molecule imaging using ambient light.
By exploiting dynamics arising from nonlinear laser–material interactions, functional microelements and arbitrarily complex 3D architectures deep inside silicon are fabricated with 1 μm resolution, without damaging the silicon above or below.
The longest coherence time of a single qubit of more than ten minutes is observed in a 171Yb+ ion. After sympathetically cooling the 171Yb+ ion qubit with a 138Ba+ ion, noise from magnetic-field fluctuations and the local oscillator is suppressed by a dynamic decoupling scheme.
The observation of soliton crystals in monolithic Kerr microresonators is reported. The physics of such resonators is explored in a regime of dense soliton occupation, offering a way to increase the efficiency of Kerr combs.
Isolated attosecond pulses (IAPs) in the extreme-ultraviolet range are generated by the interaction of half-cycle mid-infrared pulses with gas (Xe, Kr or Ar) and solid media (quartz). The energy of the IAPs is optically tunable over an octave.
By driving a high-Q fibre-based Fabry–Pérot microresonator with periodic, picosecond optical pulses, deterministic generation of stable femtosecond dissipative cavity solitons has been experimentally realized.
Variable micropotentials for light are created by thermo-optic imprinting of a dye–polymer solution within a microcavity. A thermalized photon Bose–Einstein condensate as well as the coupling and eigenstate hybridization of sites are demonstrated.
Counter-propagating solitons are generated in microresonator systems, producing dual-soliton frequency-comb streams with different repetition rates but high relative coherence useful for spectroscopy and laser ranging systems.
A unidirectional photonic wire laser has been developed by integrating reflectors into terahertz quantum cascade lasers. The transverse dimension is much smaller than the lasing wavelength (80 μm). A record wall-plug power efficiency of 1% is achieved.
Single-photon emission with 99% purity is generated from sp3 defects in carbon nanotubes (CNTs) by optical excitation at room temperature. By increasing the CNT diameter from 0.76 nm to 0.94 nm, the emission wavelength can be changed from 1,100 nm to 1,600 nm.
Valley-polarized light–matter quasiparticles in two-dimensional semiconductor microcavities are demonstrated. Access to spin–valley physics may be useful for photonic quantum technologies.
Researchers excite valley-addressable polaritons in MoSe2 incorporated in a photonic microcavity. Understanding of the valley pseudospin retention is revealed and robust states demonstrated.
The feasibility of satellite-assisted quantum communication is demonstrated by a field test on the ground. To supress noise due to sunlight the wavelength of 1,550 nm is chosen, and spectrum and spatial filtering technology developed.