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The demonstration that diamond nitrogen–vacancy centre technology can optically detect voltages with an impressive sensitivity could bring new opportunities for investigating neurobiology.
A combination of state-of-the-art temporal and spatial shaping techniques enables shaping pulsed laser light in all dimensions in a correlated manner, paving the way for new classes of on-demand space–time wavepackets.
A photonic quantum heat engine based on superradiance — many-atom quantum coherence — is shown to deliver enhanced operation, with an efficiency no longer bounded by the Carnot limit.
Multilayered ferroelectric NbOI2 crystals with sub-100-nm thickness exhibit efficient second harmonic generation, paving the way for on-chip nonlinear optical components.
A new method enables precise control of spin qubits in diamond by selectively activating them with a laser beam, thus paving the way to the control of spin qubits in dense arrays for applications in quantum technology.
The hardest barrier in the way to topological control over light with magnetic fields is extremely weak magneto-optic coupling. Now, strong light-matter coupling in an optical cavity has been used to reach record energy splitting values for photonic spins in magnetic fields. This is a potential game changer for topological photonics.
The presence of topologically protected edge states is usually determined by angular-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy, requiring clean surfaces and ultrahigh vacuum. Now, an all-optical technique, based on high-harmonic radiation, has been shown to detect topological phase transitions under ambient conditions.
Although optical communications continue to be the main driver for integrated photonics, new applications are emerging in computing and neural networks. That was the message from this year’s European Conference on Integrated Optics in Milan.
Breaking reciprocity at the nanoscale can produce directional formation of images due to the asymmetric nonlinear optical response of subwavelength anisotropic resonators. The self-induced passive non-reciprocity has advantages compared to magnet or time modulation approaches and may impact both classical and quantum photonics.
Co-doping ytterbium and praseodymium ions in photon avalanche nanoparticles rapidly builds up huge optical nonlinearities, enabling confocal microscopy to achieve super-resolution imaging at high speed.
Coherent multi-octave mid-infrared waveforms are created and manipulated by cascaded intrapulse difference-frequency generation, demonstrating absolute phase control, and adding to the growing arsenal of techniques for arbitrary light-wave control.
The ability to create complex three-dimensional structures of light has reached new heights with the experimental observation of two distinct kinds of toroidal pulses, the optical analogue of smoke rings.
Ferroelectric domain switching controlled by electrical pulses provides a controllable means to tune the refractive index of BaTiO3 thin films. Now, a device based on this material is presented that is capable of implementing low-power, high-speed and CMOS-compatible programmable phase shifters in silicon photonic chips.
One hundred years ago, in 1922, Léon Brillouin discovered the scattering of light by sound waves. Within an optical fibre, Brillouin scattering may be used to create narrow-linewidth filters and spectrometers. A twisted optical fibre is now used to reduce these linewidths by over an order of magnitude, down to the sub-MHz level.
