Artistic impression of a linear relativistic electron accelerator powered by laser-generated, multicycle terahertz pulses. Longitudinal terahertz electric fields propagating through a rectangular dielectric-lined waveguide are phase-velocity matched to the relativistic electron bunches to improve the interaction. The concept could ultimately yield multistaged, high-gradient acceleration of particle beams.

See Jamison et al.

Artistic depiction of a Landau-quantized electron wave function dressed by virtual photons in an optical resonator. Femtosecond deactivation of the resonator strips photons off the electrons much faster than a single cycle of light, unveiling otherwise inaccessible properties of this strongly coupled quantum state of light and matter.

See Lange et al.

Photograph of a perovskite-filled membrane that serves as a new type of direct-conversion X-ray detecting material. The approach could lead to low-cost, large-area X-ray imaging equipment.

See Huang et al.

Artistic impression of an integrated photodetector for telecommunications that combines 2D materials with silicon photonics. The device consists of a flake of strained MoTe2 on top of a silicon microring resonator and offers a high responsivity and low dark current at the telecom wavelength of 1,550 nm.

See Sorger et al.

Artist’s impression of pure quartic soliton pulses reaching high intensities while propagating in an optical fibre. Whereas conventional solitons are limited in energy and peak power, pure quartic solitons can be much more powerful, enabling them to shatter the glass ceiling that limits the performance of regular soliton lasers.

See Runge et al.

Depiction of chip-based structured illumination microscopy, where the evanescent field from an optical waveguide circuit excites fluorescence from cells grown on the chip’s surface. Multiple waveguide arms and thermo-optical phase modulators are used to generate an interference pattern that serves as the structured illumination.

See Helle et al.

Artistic impression of functional activity encoded in light rays emitted from computer-generated neurons. While fluorescence from within biological tissue, such as brain tissue, is usually scrambled by the strong scatter, decoding of speckle patterns makes it possible to recover temporal information even after multiple scattering events.

See Moretti et al.

Integrated quantum photonics exploits single photons of light as quantum information carriers on a convenient and scalable chip-based platform. Progress in the field now allows on-chip generation, processing and detection of quantum states of light, paving the way for applications in quantum communications, simulations and computing.

See Thompson et al.; See Elshaari et al.; See Editorial

The ultrafast charge-transfer dynamics that occur at a graphene/silicon carbide interface are studied by a laser-based method. When electrons in graphene are excited by femtosecond laser pulses, they quickly leave the graphene and move to the silicon carbide on a timescale of <300 attoseconds. Ultrafast charge transfer in such interfaces could offer opportunities for constructing petahertz electronics in the future.

See Heide et al.

Artistic impression of a spectral super-resolution experiment using a random laser as a sparse frequency sampling source. The sample causes a modulation in the narrow, chaotic lasing peaks, enabling the sample’s transmission function to be determined with an enhanced spectral resolution.

See Wiersma et al.

Artistic image of light localized in a topological kagome photonic crystal composed of a carefully arranged array of dielectric pillars. Photons in the crystal are entangled due to topology and long-range interactions.

See Khanikaev et al.

Artistic impression of an ultrafast, nanoscale all-optical switch. Light enters and leaves the device via tapered silicon waveguides (purple). In the centre of the device, light is confined in a nanoscale slot that is surrounded by gold (yellow) and covered by a layer of graphene (hexagonal lattice).

See Notomi et al.