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So far, a continuous time crystal has only been implemented on a quantum system. Optically driven many-body interactions in a nanomechanical photonic metamaterial now allow the realization of a classical continuous time crystal.

Light propagating in a medium can undergo polarization rotation, an effect that depends on light intensity and chiral properties. Renet al. report polarization rotation in a plasmonic metamaterial with million-fold stronger nonlinearity than that found in natural crystals.

Controlling the generation of light in nano-scale systems is a challenging task and is of growing importance. Here, Li et al. propose a means of controlling the wavefront of light emanating from a single nano scale emitter by holographic principles using a plasmonic metasurface.

Progress with metamaterials and plasmonics in more applications is stymied by a lack of low-loss media at high frequencies. In this work, Ou et al. show that the topological insulator Bi_1.5Sb_0.5Te_1.8Se_1.2exhibits plasmonic resonances between 350 and 550 nm, and that adding gratings extends this considerably.

Metamaterials can be engineered to provide electric and magnetic responses that cannot be achieved in natural media. Here, the authors present a metamaterial based on plasmonic chevron nanowires that it exhibits a large reciprocal magneto-electro-optical effect driven by the Lorentz force.

Although many electromagnetic cloaking schemes exist at different wavelengths, realizing a broadband visible wavelength device is hard. By relaxing the need for phase preservation inherent to most methods, Chen et al.present a ray-optics scheme for cloaking large-scale objects from the human eye.

Understanding the nature of coherent absorption is essential for exploiting it in new technologies. Here, the authors show that a metamaterial can deterministically absorb photons from a travelling wave with nearly unitary probability, down to the single-photon level.

Pulses of light with a toroidal structure are experimentally realized in the terahertz and optical regions.

Here, the authors show that integration of metamaterial and optical fibre technologies enables all-optical XOR, NOT and AND logical functions that are performed at up to 40 gigabits per second with few femtojoules per bit energy consumption within a coherent fully fiberized network.

Ultra-compact phonon polariton devices may benefit from the atomically thin nature of van der Waals materials. Here, the authors report that atomically 2D transition metal dichalcogenides on a silicon carbide substrate support a 190-fold confinement of propagating surface phonon polaritons.

A metasurface composed of pixels of optically switchable phase change material yields a photonic platform that can be configured on demand to perform a variety of optical tasks.

The maximum imaging resolution in classical optics is limited to approximately the wavelength of light used, and subwavelength resolution can only be achieved by advanced imaging schemes. The appeal of the super-oscillatory lens optical microscope described here is that it enables subwavelength imaging with, in principle, unlimited resolution using a modified conventional microscope.

Many people believe that the LED was discovered by US researchers working in the 1960s. In fact, Henry Round at Marconi Labs noted the emission of light from a semiconductor diode 100 years ago and, independently, a forgotten Russian genius — Oleg Losev — discovered the LED.

Examples of structural phase changes abound in the natural world around us. But if we can exploit such changes on the nanoscale using light, new nanophotonics technology may be just around the corner.

An optical probe has been developed for the chemical mapping of materials at the nanoscale by combining plasmonics, Raman spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy.

The authors report subatomic precision in measuring the displacement of a nanowire. Such precision is achieved by employing deep-learning enabled analysis of single-shot scattering of topologically structured superoscillatory illumination.

Photonics can play a pivotal role in bringing time crystals to the domain of optical ‘timetronics’ — an information and data technology that relies on the unique functionalities of this sophisticated yet esoteric state of matter.

The fields of metamaterials and plasmonics are both set to benefit from the use of superconducting materials.

The ability to modulate optical plasmons, propagating along a metal–dielectric waveguide, on the femtosecond time scale suggests that plasmons may be a suitable data carrier for future ultrasfast communication applications.

Electrostatic forces drive mechanical reconfiguration of a photonic metamaterial and enable megahertz-frequency electric modulation of its optical properties.

Several approaches are capable of beating the classical 'diffraction limit'. In the optical domain, not only are superlenses a promising choice: concepts such as super-oscillations could provide feasible alternatives.

Topological waves and their exotic properties are attracting intense research interest. Here, the authors report on the discovery of supertoroidal electromagnetic pulses with robust skyrmionic topology that persists upon propagation over arbitrarily long distances.

Optical trapping of single atoms is relevant for applications to quantum chemistry and quantum computing. This works demonstrates the use of superoscillatory field leading to rapid local spatial variations of the intensity and phase of light to trap a single cold Caesium atom into a reconfigurable sub-wavelength optical trap.

Phase change materials are of enormous interest in the field of plasmonics and nanophotonics. For such applications, it has gone largely unnoticed that some chalcogenides accrue plasmonic properties in the transition from an amorphous to a crystalline state. In this work, we show that the phase transition-induced emergence of plasmonic properties in the crystalline state can markedly change the optical properties of subwavelength-thickness nanostructured GeSbTe films, providing for the realization of non-volatile, reconfigurable (e.g. color-tunable) chalcogenide metasurfaces operating at visible frequencies, and thus creating opportunities for developments in non-volatile optical memory, solid state displays and all-optical switching devices.

Victor Georgievich Veselago (1929–2018), a Russian scientist from the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, provided great inspiration and impetus to the field of metamaterials with his theoretical analysis of materials with a negative index of refraction.

Topology in electromagnetic fields can lead to a range of intriguing and unexpected phenomena. Here the authors describe a family of supertoroidal light pulses that exhibit skyrmionic topological structure flying in free space.

Here, the authors demonstrate tunable highly confined surface phonon-polaritons in CMOS-compatible interfaces of nm-thick germanium on silicon carbide. The sensitivity of real-space polaritonic patterns is a pathway for the detection of the interface composition change at sub-nanometer level.

Here, the authors demonstrate excitation and active tuning of sharp Fano resonances in a MEMS reconfigurable metasurface possessing multiple-input-output states. They realize XOR, XNOR, NOT and NAND logic gate operations by using two independently controllable electrical inputs and an optical readout using terahertz beam.

When the nanophotonics research community finally gets back to in-person conferences, the rooms will have empty chairs on the first row. The chairs will be reserved for Professor Mark I. Stockman.

Metamaterials are man-made structures that allow optical properties to be shaped on length scales far smaller than the wavelength of light. Although metamaterials were initially considered mainly for static applications, this Review summarizes efforts towards an active functionality that enables a much broader range of photonic device applications.

Optical superoscillations are rapid spatial variations of the intensity and phase of light. This Review describes technologies for generating superoscillatory hotspots and discuss advances in imaging and metrology with superoscillatory light that, in combination with artificial intelligence, offer deeply subwavelength optical resolution.