Articles in 2024

The authors introduce a loss-enhanced magneto-optical effect and sublinearly amplify the frequency response of a non-Hermitian optical cavity under different background magnetic fields. This effect is exploited to detect subtle magnetic field variations against a strong background with enhanced system response and sensitivity.

Researchers use organic ligands to reclaim energy lost during the relaxation of secondary X-rays generated by the interaction of high-energy particles with scintillators. Enhanced radioluminescence within lanthanide metal complexes and capture of dark triplet excitons with near-unity extraction efficiency are achieved.

By considering waves from a bounding spherical volume, a clear onset of a tunnelling escape of waves that both defines a limiting number of well-coupled channels for any volume and explains the subsequent rapid fall-off of coupling strengths can be obtained.

Implementing stable lasers often requires complex packaging of multiple devices, such as stand-alone external cavities and isolators. Now, stabilizing and isolating lasers can be realized in a single silicon chip thanks to the Kerr nonlinear effect in a resonator.

Light-based processing and machine learning featured heavily in San Diego at the 2024 SPIE Optics + Photonics conference. Enthusiasm was coupled with questions related to the real-world applicability and the merits of linear vs non-linear, and all-optical vs hybrid, approaches.

Light upconversion and bistable optical switching is achieved via positive photonic feedback by integrating a photoactive layer with a tandem OLED.

Picosecond pulses of terahertz light used for rapid and reversible switching of charged excitons (trions) into neutral excitons in a two-dimensional semiconductor open perspectives for high-speed optoelectronic devices and fundamental studies of new electronic phases of matter.

Oscillators for tunable terahertz waves with ultra-high spectral purity may pave the way for precise molecular clocks and extremely high-data-rate wireless communications.

Daniel Mittleman spoke with Nature Photonics about promising applications using terahertz waves, including spectroscopy, imaging, wireless communications, and quality control in industry.

A new attosecond metrology technique for studying light–molecule interactions in liquids may open the door for variety of attosecond applications in chemistry and biology.

Researchers experimentally demonstrate a fully integrated coherent optical neural network. The system, with six neurons and three layers, operates with a latency of 410 ps.

A diamond storage medium that uses fluorescent vacancy centres as robust storage units provides a high storage density of 14.8 Tbit cm⁻³.

Orbital angular momentum transfer from optical vortex beams to electronic quantum Hall states is reported in a graphene sheet, showing a robust contribution to the radial photocurrent that depends on the vorticity of light.

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.