Optics and photonics articles within Nature

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  • Article |

    The development of a 400,000-pixel superconducting nanowire single-photon detector array is described, improving the current state of the art by a factor of 400 and showing scalability well beyond the present demonstration.

    • B. G. Oripov
    • , D. S. Rampini
    •  & A. N. McCaughan

  • Article |

    Measurements of thermal transport along 3C-SiC nanowires with and without a gold coating on the end(s) suggest that thermally excited surface phonon polaritons can be used in nanostructures to substantially enhance thermal conductivity.

    • Zhiliang Pan
    • , Guanyu Lu
    •  & Deyu Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    An all-analog chip combining electronic and light computing achieves systemic energy efficiency of more than three orders of magnitude and a computing speed of more than one order of magnitude compared with state-of-the-art computing processors.

    • Yitong Chen
    • , Maimaiti Nazhamaiti
    •  & Qionghai Dai

  • Article |

    A scalable nanophotonic electron accelerator with a high particle acceleration gradient and good beam confinement achieves an energy gain of 43%.

    • Tomáš Chlouba
    • , Roy Shiloh
    •  & Peter Hommelhoff

  • News & Views |

    An organic light-emitting diode has been integrated with an optically driven organic laser to produce laser light from electricity. The design bypasses many of the challenges posed by direct electrical input in such devices.

    • Stéphane Kéna-Cohen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    An electrically driven organic semiconductor laser is achieved by integrating a device structure that efficiently couples an organic light-emitting diode, with extremely high internal-light generation, with a polymer distributed feedback laser.

    • Kou Yoshida
    • , Junyi Gong
    •  & Ifor D. W. Samuel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Resonant X-ray excitation of the  45Sc nuclear isomeric state was achieved by irradiation of a Sc-metal foil with 12.4-keV photon pulses from a state-of-the-art X-ray free-electron laser, allowing a high-precision determination of the transition energy.

    • Yuri Shvyd’ko
    • , Ralf Röhlsberger
    •  & Tomasz Kolodziej

  • Article |

    A route to greatly elevate joint densities of states by introducing a flat-band electronic structure is demonstrated, showing metallic λ-Ti3O5 powders have a high solar absorptivity and offering insights into access to cost-effective solar-to-steam generation.

    • Bo Yang
    • , Zhiming Zhang
    •  & Liang Zuo

  • Research Briefing |

    Loss of photons over long-distance connections limits the development of quantum networks, necessitating the use of quantum ‘repeater’ systems to boost signals between network nodes. Erbium ions incorporated into calcium tungstate crystals have been found to emit photons in the telecommunications frequency band that are indistinguishable from each other, and thus show promise for use in such repeaters.

  • Article |

    Er3+ is implanted into CaWO4, a material with non-polar site symmetry free of background rare earth ions, to realize reduced optical spectral diffusion in nanophotonic devices, representing a step towards making telecom band quantum repeater networks with single ions.

    • Salim Ourari
    • , Łukasz Dusanowski
    •  & Jeff D. Thompson

  • Article |

    In the layered magnetic semiconductor CrSBr, emergent light–matter hybrids (polaritons) increase the spectral bandwidth of correlations between the magnetic, electronic and optical properties, enabling largely tunable optical responses to applied magnetic fields and magnons.

    • Florian Dirnberger
    • , Jiamin Quan
    •  & Vinod M. Menon

  • Article |

    Lead-free perovskite light-emitting diodes (LEDs) prepared using tautomeric mixture coordination provide improved ordering in the crystal structure, reduced recombination and enhanced exciton binding energy compared with lead-containing perovskite-based LEDs.

    • Dongyuan Han
    • , Jie Wang
    •  & Ning Wang

  • Research Briefing |

    A telecommunications fibre cable was used to capture signals of seismic activity during a moderate-sized earthquake in California in 2021. The signals revealed sources of high-frequency seismic activity and, together with simulations, suggest that these sources arise from breaks in asperities: patches where friction usually locks two sides of a fault together.

  • Article |

    Distributed acoustic sensing technology is utilized to image four high-frequency rupture subevents of the 2021 Antelope Valley, California, earthquake; the results indicate that the subevents are due to the breaking of fault asperities.

    • Jiaxuan Li
    • , Taeho Kim
    •  & Zhongwen Zhan

  • Article |

    Heat-assisted detection and ranging is experimentally shown to see texture and depth through darkness as if it were day, and also perceives decluttered physical attributes beyond RGB or thermal vision.

    • Fanglin Bao
    • , Xueji Wang
    •  & Zubin Jacob

  • Research Briefing |

    MicroLED displays have advantages over commercially available technologies, but are difficult to put together efficiently. Agitating microLED chiplets and a substrate together in fluid causes them to self‑assemble quickly and with high yield.

  • Article |

    A MicroLED lighting panel, assembled in 60 s by a surface-tension-driven fluidic self-assembly technique, gave a yield as high as 99.90% through the addition of a small amount of poloxamer to the assembly solution.

    • Daewon Lee
    • , Seongkyu Cho
    •  & Sunghoon Kwon

  • Article |

    Three-dimensional imaging using a frequency–angular resolving and frequency-modulated continuous-wave LiDAR enabled by a chip-scale acousto-optic beam-steering device has been demonstrated, with the simplicity and low cost of the device making this a promising technology.

    • Bingzhao Li
    • , Qixuan Lin
    •  & Mo Li

  • News & Views |

    Time signals have been transmitted across 300 kilometres with an accuracy and precision limited only by the quantum nature of photons. The feat promises to revolutionize high-precision science using satellites.

    • David Gozzard

  • Article |

    Laser-based time transfer with near quantum-limited acquisition and timing is demonstrated that can support femtosecond precision over 102 dB link loss, more than sufficient for future time transfer to geosynchronous orbits for future optical clock networks.

    • Emily D. Caldwell
    • , Jean-Daniel Deschenes
    •  & Laura C. Sinclair

  • Article
    | Open Access

    We developed large-scale photonic-crystal surface-emitting lasers with controlled Hermitian and non-Hermitian couplings inside the photonic crystal and a pre-installed spatial distribution of the lattice constant, which leads to the realization of a continuous-wave brightness of 1 GW cm−2 sr−1.

    • Masahiro Yoshida
    • , Shumpei Katsuno
    •  & Susumu Noda

  • Article |

    The cycles of laser light have been used to advance transmission electron microscopy to attosecond time resolution, revealing the interactions between light and matter in terms of their fundamental dimensions in space and time.

    • David Nabben
    • , Joel Kuttruff
    •  & Peter Baum

  • Outlook |

    Photocatalysis using light-emitting diodes could reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by industrial chemical processes.

    • Neil Savage

  • News & Views |

    A long-sought photon that is emitted by the nucleus of a thorium isotope has now been observed. The feat is a key step in efforts to build a nuclear clock, a device that is precise enough to probe the Universe’s best-kept secrets.

    • Adriana Pálffy

  • Article |

    The authors report on the radiative decay of a low-energy isomer in thorium-229 (229mTh), which has consequences for the design of a future nuclear clock and eases the search for direct laser excitation of the atomic nucleus.

    • Sandro Kraemer
    • , Janni Moens
    •  & Ulrich Wahl

  • News & Views |

    Light-sensitive particles have been shown to stratify in solution in a way that changes the colour of the whole suspension. The system forms a colour-changing ink that could make electronic paper a viable technology.

    • Hector Lopez-Rios
    •  & Monica Olvera de la Cruz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A simple spectral selective active colloidal system is designed in which TiO2 colloidal species are coded with dyes to form a photochromic swarm that adapts the appearance of incident light due to layered phase segregation.

    • Jing Zheng
    • , Jingyuan Chen
    •  & Jinyao Tang

  • Research Briefing |

    Most light-field sensors — devices that detect the angles of incoming light rays to reconstruct 3D scenes — can detect light only in the ultraviolet and visible wavelength ranges. A newly developed light-field sensor comprising perovskite nanocrystals encodes the angles of incoming visible-light beams and X-rays as different colours.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Lithographically patterned perovskite nanocrystal arrays were used to determine radiation vectors from X-rays to visible light and the emission colours of the nanoparticles was used to create images of three-dimensional objects and for phase-contrast imaging.

    • Luying Yi
    • , Bo Hou
    •  & Xiaogang Liu

  • News & Views |

    Nanocrystals made from a semiconducting material have been shown to emit intense light when excited with an electric current. The technology could be used to build a type of laser that is more versatile than those in general use.

    • Thilo Stöferle
    •  & Rainer F. Mahrt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    All-optical, mode-selective manipulation of the crystal lattice can be used to enhance and stabilize ferromagnetism in YTiO3 well above its equilibrium ordering temperature and for many nanoseconds, enabling dynamic engineering of practically useful non-equilibrium functionalities in fluctuating electronic systems.

    • A. S. Disa
    • , J. Curtis
    •  & A. Cavalleri

  • Article |

    A new transfer method for microLEDs fabrication based on fluidic self-assembly technology combining magnetic and dielectrophoresis forces is described, achieving a very high simultaneous RGB LED transfer yield and over large areas.

    • Wonjae Chang
    • , Jungsub Kim
    •  & Jeong Soo Lee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Colloidal quantum dot devices demonstrating electrically pumped amplified spontaneous emission are described, showing strong, broadband optical gain and bright edge emission, opening the path to solution-processable laser diodes.

    • Namyoung Ahn
    • , Clément Livache
    •  & Victor I. Klimov

  • Article |

    Suppression of shallow traps responsible for dark count rates in polycrystalline methylammonium lead triiodide using diphenyl sulfide enables the production of metal-halide perovskite photon-counting detectors that allow sensitive detection of γ-ray spectra.

    • Ying Zhou
    • , Chengbin Fei
    •  & Jinsong Huang

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