Articles

Using the European XFEL free-electron laser, researchers demonstrate terawatt-scale, attosecond hard X-ray pulses. Ten pulse trains per second, each containing hundreds of pulses at megahertz repetition rates, are achieved. Such short and intense pulses at high repetition rate enable unprecedented damage-free X-ray measurements with attosecond temporal resolution.

Topological protection in disclination lattices that relies on non-trivial winding in momentum space and real space is used to confine and guide vortices that feature arbitrary high-order charges. This approach could help in the development of orbital angular momentum-based photonic devices.

Optical realization of photonic time crystals can be achieved by using temporal variations in a resonant material to expand the momentum bandgap, even at low modulation strengths, with known low-loss materials and realistic laser pump powers.

Co-deposition of copper thiocyanate with perovskite on textured silicon enables an efficient perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell with a certified power conversion efficiency of 31.46% for 1 cm² area devices.

Sub-cycle phase-resolved attosecond interferometry is developed. The obtained phase information enables us to decouple the multiple quantum paths induced in a light-driven system, isolating their coherent contribution and retrieving their temporal evolution.

Using spin-5/2 nuclei of ¹⁷³Yb atoms trapped in an optical lattice, a Schrödinger-cat state persists for a coherence time of 1.4 × 10³ s. In measuring external magnetic fields, the cat state exhibits a sensitivity approaching the Heisenberg limit.

Researchers use a DNA-mediated approach for the programmable assembly of octahedron-shaped plasmonic gold nanocrystals into nonlinear optical metacrystals. A maximum second-harmonic generation conversion efficiency of 10⁻⁹ is demonstrated.

Tabletop, water-window X-rays are generated using free-electron-driven van der Waals materials. The X-ray energy from the source can be tuned across the water window, and the established fundamental scaling laws for the tunable photon flux may enable the design of powerful emitters based on free-electron-driven quantum materials.

Researchers demonstrate optical weights for in-memory photonic computing using magneto-optic memory cells comprising Ce:YIG on silicon micro-ring resonators. Non-reciprocal phase shift provides a fast, efficient and robust integrated optical processing platform.

Near-petahertz electric field detection of few-femtosecond pulses with a temporal resolution of 200 attoseconds and subfemtojoule sensitivity is experimentally demonstrated, paving the path towards high-resolution biological spectro-microscopy.

Guide-star-free imaging through turbid media is achieved by computational back-projection and averaging of as few as 25 holographically measured scattered fields under a random unknown illumination.

Deep-ultraviolet micro-light-emitting diodes based on aluminium gallium nitride are fabricated for maskless photolithography. The peak wavelength is 270 nm, and the 3 μm device achieved a peak external quantum efficiency of 5.7% and a maximum brightness of 396 W cm^–2.

Both laser stabilization and isolation are demonstrated simultaneously by using Kerr nonlinearity in a high-Q silicon nitride ring resonator to self-injection lock a distributed-feedback laser, bringing on-chip lasers closer to real-world fully integrated applications.

Polarization-entangled photon pairs are generated from two perpendicularly aligned two-dimensional crystals of NbOCl₂. The polarization-entangled state is measured with a fidelity up to 86%. The measured count rate normalized to pump power and interaction length is 472 Hz mW⁻¹ mm⁻¹.

Researchers demonstrate nonlinear Compton scattering in a strong laser field, in which a laser-accelerated multi-GeV electron scatters off hundreds of laser photons and converts them into a single gamma-ray photon with several-hundred-MeV energy.

A scalable quantum processor based on the discrete-time quantum walk of time-bin-entangled photon pairs on synthetic temporal photonic lattices is realized on a fibre-coupled loop system. Key fundamental quantum operations are demonstrated.

Fluorescent DNA framework dots, consisting of a hydrophobic nanocavity containing a near-infrared-emitting dye, enable precise tumour imaging with sensitivity down to a few tens of cells in mouse models.

Efficient organic emitters of ultraviolet light are realized by the use of isomers that exhibit strong through-space conjugation.

A quantum-to-quantum Bernoulli factory is demonstrated by using a reconfigurable Clements’s squared unitary circuit in an integrated quantum photonic platform. Three interferometer designs are proposed for the basic operations of a field on qubit states.

The introduction of 3TPYMB, an n-type molecule into inverted perovskite solar cells, enables a power conversion efficiency of 25.6%, with devices maintaining up to 98% of the initial efficiency after 1,800 h of operation.