Optical techniques articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The researchers showcase all-crystalline and hybrid mid-infrared supermirrors with the lowest optical losses ever demonstrated in this wavelength range, representing an unprecedented improvement over any existing mirrors made with any production technology.

    • Gar-Wing Truong
    • , Lukas W. Perner
    •  & Garrett D. Cole

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Standard techniques for Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Microscopy are limited by the electronics to 100’s of picoseconds time resolution. Here, the authors show how to use two-photon interference to perform fluorescence lifetime sensing with picosecond-scale resolution.

    • Ashley Lyons
    • , Vytautas Zickus
    •  & Daniele Faccio

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Levitated nanoparticles are a new platform for exploring quantum mechanics at macroscopic scales. The authors realize feedback controls of all external degrees of freedom of a nanoparticle, with one translational degree in the quantum ground state.

    • Mitsuyoshi Kamba
    • , Ryoga Shimizu
    •  & Kiyotaka Aikawa

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mie resonances are typically manipulated through varying nanostructure shape/size. Here, authors found that Gaussian beam displacement excites higher-order multipolar modes, not accessible by plane wave, featuring maximal linear and nonlinear scattering efficiency when the focus is misaligned.

    • Yu-Lung Tang
    • , Te-Hsin Yen
    •  & Shi-Wei Chu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Optoelectronic neural networks are a promising avenue in AI computing for parallelization, power efficiency, and speed. Here, the authors present a dual-neuron optical-artificial learning approach for training large-scale diffractive neural networks, achieving VGG-level performance on ImageNet in simulation with a network that is 10 times larger than existing ones.

    • Xiaoyun Yuan
    • , Yong Wang
    •  & Lu Fang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Deep imaging in complex scattering media is hindered by multiple light scattering. Here, the authors proposed a method to trace multiple scattering trajectories in situ using a recorded reflection matrix and achieved enhanced imaging depth by converting these multiple scattering to signal waves.

    • Sungsam Kang
    • , Yongwoo Kwon
    •  & Wonshik Choi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Highly reflective surfaces are notorious in 3D sensing because they can cause errors in depth perception. Here, the authors devise a polarization structured light 3D sensor for this problem, in which high-contrast-grating VCSELs are used. Experiments are reported to demonstrate the sensor can be used to see and see through the highly reflective surfaces.

    • Xuanlun Huang
    • , Chenyang Wu
    •  & Connie J. Chang-Hasnain

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Researchers demonstrate robust optical communication around fully opaque occlusions, partially or entirely blocking the light path, using a pair of electronic encoder and passive diffractive decoder that are jointly optimized using deep learning.

    • Md Sadman Sakib Rahman
    • , Tianyi Gan
    •  & Aydogan Ozcan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors develop a method for sub-diffraction near-field imaging using measurements taken relatively far from an object, amplifying evanescent waves that encode the highest resolution. The increased distance greatly reduces the perturbation of the fields by the imaging device itself.

    • Alessandro Tuniz
    •  & Boris T. Kuhlmey

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is a significant challenge to create an interface-free lateral optical force under the illumination of a single polarized plane wave. Here, the authors provide a minimalist paradigm to address this challenge by exploiting multipolar interplay in a single elongated particle.

    • Fan Nan
    • , Francisco J. Rodríguez-Fortuño
    •  & Xiaohao Xu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Recent years have seen a growing need for miniaturized spectroscopic tools. Here, authors present a novel integrated spectrometer with programmable photonic circuits, achieving record-high resolution and bandwidth via only a few filtering components.

    • Chunhui Yao
    • , Kangning Xu
    •  & Richard Penty

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The assessment of selective therapeutics targeted to treat altered vasoactivity, a major characteristic of cardiovascular and oncological diseases, is still challenging due to unknown whole-body selectivity. Here the authors demonstrate that photoacoustic tomography has the potential to capture significant acute vasodilation of major arteries and vasculature selectivity.

    • Kristie Huda
    • , Dylan J. Lawrence
    •  & Carolyn L. Bayer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Recent experiments have shown the formation of ferroelectric domains in twisted van der Waals bilayers. Here, the authors report near-field infrared nano-imaging and nano-photocurrent measurements to investigate ferroelectricity in minimally twisted WSe2 by visualizing the plasmonic and photo-thermoelectric response of an adjacent graphene monolayer.

    • Shuai Zhang
    • , Yang Liu
    •  & D. N. Basov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The understanding of the orientation of luminescent molecules is currently limited by the ensemble-averaging nature of state-of-the-art measurements. Here, the authors apply single-molecule imaging to obtain complete orientation distributions of the transition dipole of individual emitter molecules.

    • Francisco Tenopala-Carmona
    • , Dirk Hertel
    •  & Malte C. Gather

  • Article
    | Open Access

    High-resolution single-photon imaging is challenging due to complex hardware and noise disturbances. Here, the authors realise simultaneous single-photon denoising and super-resolution enhancement by physics-informed deep learning, with a physical multi-source noise model, two single-photon image datasets, and a deep transformer network.

    • Liheng Bian
    • , Haoze Song
    •  & Jun Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Designing optoelectronic synapses having a multispectral color-discriminating ability is crucial for neuromorphic visual system. Here, the authors propose an strategy to introduce RGB color-discriminating synaptic functionality into a 2-terminals memristor regardless of switching medium and design a color image-recognizing CNN and light-programmable reservoir computing.

    • Jongmin Lee
    • , Bum Ho Jeong
    •  & Hui Joon Park

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Demand for data recovery from monolithic storage devices is high but current methods are inefficient. Here, authors develop a robotic OCT-guided inspection and microsurgery method, minimizing damage to device and enhancing data recovery efficiency.

    • Bin He
    • , Yuxin Zhang
    •  & Ning Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Virtual optical waveguide can be potentially utilised in variety of applications that require in situ light steering yet the efficacy is still unclear. Here, the authors show that ultrasonically-sculpted virtual gradient-index waveguides are effective in guiding and confining light inside tissue and other scattering media, and significantly outperform external lenses at this task.

    • Adithya Pediredla
    • , Matteo Giuseppe Scopelliti
    •  & Ioannis Gkioulekas

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Modern microscopes can image a sample with sub-Angstrom and sub-picosecond resolutions, but this often requires analysis of tremendously large datasets. Here, the authors demonstrate that an autonomous experiment can yield over a 70% reduction in dataset size while still producing high-fidelity images of the sample.

    • Saugat Kandel
    • , Tao Zhou
    •  & Mathew J. Cherukara

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Chemical imaging, including infrared spectroscopic microscopy with molecular sensitivity, is useful for label-free biomedical analyses, but is limited by slow speed and poor image quality. Here, the authors design a fast mid-infrared microscope with low noise and high spatial resolution for high-throughput imaging of whole slides.

    • Kevin Yeh
    • , Ishaan Sharma
    •  & Rohit Bhargava

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Traditional optical tweezers require high laser powers risking photothermal damage of the trapped objects. Here, the authors present hypothermal opto-thermophoretic tweezers (HOTTs), which use environmental cooling to simultaneously enhance thermophoretic trapping force at low laser powers and suppress the thermal damage to trapped objects.

    • Pavana Siddhartha Kollipara
    • , Xiuying Li
    •  & Yuebing Zheng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Conventional super-oscillatory devices suffer from numerical-aperture related issue including depth of focus, chromatic dispersion, and focusing, Here, the authors utilised multi-objective genetic algorithm to optimise the design and experimentally demonstrated lens with an extended depth of focus, ultra-large working distance and suppressed side-lobes.

    • Wenli Li
    • , Pei He
    •  & Yiting Yu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Measurement and control of the carrier-envelope phase (CEP) is essential for applications of few-cycle laser beams. The authors present a compact on-chip, ambient-air, CEP scanning probe and show a 3D map of spatial changes of CEP and demonstrate CEP control in the focal volume with a spatial light modulator.

    • Václav Hanus
    • , Beatrix Fehér
    •  & Péter Dombi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Current multispectral video cameras can hardly scale up beyond megapixel resolution and do not apply to large-scale scenes. The authors design a tens-ofmegapixel handheld multi-spectral imaging scheme, build a setup achieving 65-megapixel videography of 12 wavebands, and show its wide applications.

    • Weihang Zhang
    • , Jinli Suo
    •  & Qionghai Dai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Spectroscopic gas sensing with high sensitivity and selectivity finds an increasing number of applications. Here, the authors report an approach to ultrasensitive multiplexed gas sensing by integrating dual-comb spectroscopy with cavity optomechanics.

    • Xinyi Ren
    • , Jin Pan
    •  & Heping Zeng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Multicolor imaging employing genetically-encodable fluorescent proteins permits spatiotemporal live cell imaging of multiple cues. Here, authors use multicolor lifetime imaging to visualize quadruple-labelled human immunodeficiency viruses within cellular contexts.

    • Tobias Starling
    • , Irene Carlon-Andres
    •  & Sergi Padilla-Parra

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the mechanical properties of materials is critical in many fields, from soft hydrogels to biological tissues, yet current measurement methods lack the spatial and time resolution to characterize samples with complex structures. Here, the authors show non-invasive elastography technique offering advancements in resolution, sensitivity, and measurement frequencies.

    • Xu Feng
    • , Guo-Yang Li
    •  & Seok-Hyun Yun

  • Article
    | Open Access

    By using tumor-specific fluorescent tracers, fluorescence molecular imaging (FMI) can be used to visualize tumor tissues with high specificity. Here the authors report the results of a phase II trial to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of an EGFR-targeted FMI for intraoperative margin assessment in patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma.

    • Jaron G. de Wit
    • , Jasper Vonk
    •  & Max J. H. Witjes

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