Volume 4 Issue 12, December 2010

The SLAC Linac Coherent Light Source is now the world's brightest source of coherent ångström-wavelength X-rays. Paul Emma, the man who made this achievement possible, spoke to Nature Photonics about the challenges involved.

Time-domain measurements have confirmed the existence and compression of optical solitons in nanoscale planar photonic crystal waveguides, giving hope for the future prospects of on-chip nonlinear optical circuits.

The simultaneous control of photon and electron confinement at the nanoscale on an oxide platform may pave the way for optoelectronic devices measuring just a few nanometres in size.

Extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography at 13.5 nm is expected to be introduced in high-volume semiconductor chip production over the next three years. Research is now underway to investigate sub-10-nm light sources that could support lithography over the coming decades.

Solar cells are poised to play an important role in the development of a clean-energy economy, but their future success depends both on supportive government policies and research efforts to improve conversion efficiencies and bring down costs.

Researchers report rewritable nanoscale photodetectors that exploit 2–3 nm nanowire junctions. Large electromagnetic fields in the gap region aid the detector response, which is electric-field-tunable and spans the visible to near-infrared regime.

Researchers demonstrate a coherent dual-comb-based spectrometer capable of measuring continuous-wave optical waveforms at time resolutions of 30 µs and 320 µs over terahertz bandwidths. The device is potentially useful for sensing applications such as multispecies gas detection, coherent laser radar and optical metrology.

Quantum entanglement — used for quantum key distribution, communication and teleportation — is a fragile resource. Researchers investigate the conditions under which optical loss destroys entanglement, and report states that are particularly robust to such losses.

Using ∼1-mm-long photonic crystal waveguides, scientists experimentally demonstrate the compression of 3 ps pulses to a minimum duration of 580 fs at a low pulse energy of ∼20 pJ. The approach may pave the way for soliton applications in integrated photonic chips.

By combining advanced ultrashort-pulse laser technology with scanning tunneling microscopy, scientists demonstrate that they can directly image transient carrier dynamics in nanostructures in real space.

Researchers report the generation of isolated sub-160-attosecond pulses that have photon energies of 30 eV, resulting in an on-target pulse energy of a few nanojoules. The availability of attosecond sources with high peak intensities may open new avenues for attosecond pump/probe studies of electronic processes in atomic and molecular physics.

Optical grinding and polishing plays an important role when optimizing the quality of an imaging system or minimizing unwanted reflections in a fibre-optic assembly.

Imaging the transient carrier dynamics in semiconductors at both high temporal and spatial resolution has long been a goal for solid-state scientists. Hidemi Shigekawa from the University of Tsukuba in Japan told Nature Photonics how his team accomplished this feat.

New X-ray sources that combine laser technology with novel imaging techniques promise to probe the world around us at atomic spatial and temporal scales. This month, Nature Photonicspresents a special focus issue dedicated to the latest advances in X-ray optics.