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.
The direct measurement of few-cycle optical waveforms with arbitrary polarization and weak intensity is now made possible thanks to extreme ultraviolet interferometry with isolated attosecond pulses.
New theoretical analysis predicts that the introduction of a carefully designed gain and loss profile into a scattering medium could enable the unperturbed flow of light with constant, uniform intensity.
High-speed control of polarization may lead to ultrafast modulators and help explore polarization-dependent ultrafast dynamics in matter. Now, femtosecond polarization switching is realized through intraband optical excitation in an ultrathin semiconductor layer.
The demonstration of a quantum dot-sensitized graphene image sensor that offers a very broad spectral response and that is integrated with silicon CMOS technology could potentially be a new cost-effective chip platform for hyperspectral imaging and spectroscopy.
Photonic time-stretch techniques and their applications are reviewed. The approach enables the observation of signals that are otherwise too short or rapid for conventional measurement.
Hyperbolic metamaterials are shown to enable the emission of Cherenkov radiation from low-energy charged particles travelling at slow speeds. The achievement could lead to new forms of light sources and detectors.
There is typically a compromise between speed and efficiency when designing silicon photodiodes. Now, researchers have exploited microstructuring to achieve fast and thin devices that are also efficient.
A laser-annealing technique for increasing the dopant concentration in semiconductors, the creation of a glass with second-order optical nonlinearity and the realization of optical topological insulators were highlights at the Japan Society of Applied Physics Spring Meeting.
Applying metamaterial concepts to dielectric systems offers low losses compared with metallic structures. Here, silicon-based metamaterial and nanophotonic advances are reviewed.
Combining attosecond science and nanophotonics potentially offers a route to enhance control over light–matter interactions at the nanoscale and provide a promising platform for information processing.
It has been revealed that simple anisotropic optical waveguides and the vectorial nature of electromagnetic waves can support a variety of bound states in the continuum akin to those introduced in quantum mechanics almost a century ago.
The emission direction and timing of extreme-ultraviolet light can now be manipulated through an opto-optical approach that uses an infrared pulse to control the spatial and spectral phase of free induction decay resulting from atoms excited by attosecond light.
Reabsorption losses have long been holding back the commercial viability of luminescent solar concentrators. Now, non-toxic silicon-based quantum dots with enhanced Stokes shift may enable the technology to enjoy practical implementation.
Coherent backscattering experiments indicate that spontaneous Raman scattering is a coherent process that can lead to macroscopically observable interference phenomena in disordered solid-state samples.
The mathematics of manifolds is providing inspiration for creating exotic states of light with unique properties such as robustness against disorder and unidirectional propagation.
The underlying principles and unique optical applications of structures exhibiting near-zero dielectric permittivity and/or magnetic permeability are reviewed. The timely relevance to nonlinear, non-reciprocal and non-local effects is highlighted.
