Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Researchers overcome the propagation loss of surface-plasmon polaritons, with this demonstration being the first direct gain measurement of propagating plasmons. Low-loss long-range modes of a metal stripe waveguide are amplified by using optically pumped dye molecules in solution as the gain medium. The mode power gain was measured to be 8.55 dB mm−1.
By exploiting stochastic resonance — in which nonlinear coupling allows signals to grow at the expense of noise — scientists show that they can recover noise-hidden images propagating in a self-focusing medium. The findings pave the way for a variety of nonlinear instability-driven imaging techniques.
Precise spatial characterization of the origin of light emission from organic light-emitting diodes is important for improving the design of future devices and gaining valuable insight into their operation. Here, a characterization scheme that achieves this task with a spatial resolution better than 5 nm is reported.
A measurement scheme that is capable of recording the amplitude and phase of arbitrary shaped optical waveforms with a bandwidth of up to 160 GHz is presented. The approach is compatible with integration on a silicon photonic chip and could aid the study of transient ultrafast phenomena.
Tailoring of arbitrary single-mode states of travelling light up to the two-photon level is proposed and demonstrated. The desired state is remotely prepared in the signal channel of spontaneous parametric down-conversion by means of conditional measurements on the idler channel.
Nanocavity optomechanical systems can exhibit strong dynamical back-action between mechanical motion and the cavity light field. Here, optical control of mechanical motion within two different nanocavity structures is demonstrated. A form of optically controlled mechanical transparency is also demonstrated, which is analogous to electromagnetically induced transparency.
Fine control over the material structure within a volume gives rise to new physical phenomena and more freedom for designing spatial, spectral and temporal functions. A three-dimensional scattering approach to the design of aperiodic volume optical elements is presented, expanding the traditional capabilities of volume holography, photonic crystals and diffractive optics.
The combination of distributed Rayleigh back-scatter and Raman gain in an optical fibre yields an open cavity, mirror-less fibre laser that offers stable operation at the telecommunications wavelength of 1.5 µm.
Scientists demonstrate that a single 7.5-μm-diameter microdisk laser coupled to a silicon-on-insulator wire waveguide can work as an all-optical flip-flop memory. Under a continuous bias of 3.5 mA, flip-flop operation is demonstrated using optical triggering pulses of 1.8 fJ and with a switching time of 60 ps. This device is attractive for on-chip all-optical signal buffering, switching, and processing.
Ultrabroad-bandwidth radiofrequency pulses that increase data transmission rate and allow multipath tolerance in wireless communications are difficult to generate using chip-based electronics. Now, a chip-scale fully programmable spectral shaper consisting of cascaded multichannel micro-ring resonators is demonstrated as a solution.
Rydberg blockade — the suppression of excitation of more than one Rydberg atom within a blockade volume — has so far been realized using ultracold atoms. Now, scientists show that coherence times of >100 ns are achievable with coherent Rydberg atomic spectroscopy in micrometre-sized thermal vapour cells, making them good candidates for investigating low-dimensional strongly interacting Rydberg gases, constructing quantum gates and building single-photon sources.
