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A central goal of topological photonics has been to develop compact isolators using protected, non-reciprocal edge states. A recent demonstration of a ferrite-based microwave isolator leverages the magnon-induced topological photonic bandgap to achieve over 100 dB of isolation in a device smaller than a single free-space wavelength.
A new imaging platform combines a high-speed, multichannel camera system with an iterative spectral unmixing algorithm, enabling high-resolution imaging of up to seven distinct fluorophores, even under challenging live-cell conditions.
Electrically induced single-photon emission and spin initialization of a silicon T centre in photonic structures is a promising step towards integrated spin–photon interfaces for quantum networks.
Thermodynamic-like phenomena in optics are a nascent yet elusive route to control light flow. By emulating Joule–Thomson expansion in synthetic photonic lattices, it is now possible to funnel light universally into a single output, regardless of the input.
The quantum nature of light has been harnessed in a photonic chip to perform machine-learning tasks. For specifically designed problems, the approach outperforms established classical methods.
The integration of a quantum emitter-embedded metasurface (QEMS) with a microelectromechanical system (MEMS)-actuated cavity enables ångstrom-level wavelength tuning and dynamic polarization-resolved emission. The platform provides a design paradigm for reconfigurable solid-state photon sources.
Shaping the polarization state of ultrashort pulses in the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) range is challenging, owing to the lack of suitable materials for controlling the phase of the radiation. However, an approach using seeded free-electron lasers operating in the XUV wavelength regime now makes it possible to synthesize pulses with spatially dependent polarization states.
The fast and convenient study of ion channels in cells continues to pose challenges. Interferometric scattering microscopy delivers robust signals from single channels, paving the way for label-free investigation of their function in live cells.
A spectrally and polarization-resolved wavefront detector can measure the spatio-temporal vector electric field of ultrashort laser pulses in a single shot.
Guiding light is an essential task in optics, from optical fibres to compact nanoscale systems. Here, a few-atoms-thin MoTe2 layer embedded into a planar waveguide emits photons into waveguide modes that propagate coherently, paving the way for waveguide quantum electrodynamics with van der Waals materials.
Holmium-doped nanoparticles exhibit a novel parallel photon avalanching mechanism, offering controlled chromaticity and enabling sub-diffraction, multicolour bio-imaging upon excitation with a single near-infrared laser.
Programmable nonlinearities — including control over the response order up to high orders — can now be realized on-chip at ultralow power via field programmability. This advance paves the way for more scalable and energy-efficient photonic computing in applications such as machine learning, optical signal processing and communications, analogue computing and quantum photonics.
Attosecond pulses in the optical regime, formed as solitons during infrared laser-pulse compression in a hollow-core fibre, may open up attosecond science in molecules and solids.
Quantum light is shown to perturb strong-field interactions in solids, revealing photon bunching in high-harmonic sidebands. The generation of attosecond non-classical states opens up quantum-enhanced photonics in novel temporal and spectral domains.
