Nonlinear optics articles from across Nature Portfolio

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.

Combining a low-coherence source with silicon nitride ring resonators featuring normal group velocity dispersion enables electrically pumped, high-power microcombs, providing on-chip power up to 158 mW and high-coherence comb lines with linewidths as narrow as 200 kHz.

This work demonstrates compact thin-film lithium niobate detectors for broadband, sensitive terahertz detection up to 3 THz, introducing a differential scheme that accesses either temporal differences or derivatives of the THz field.

Strong-field laser surface passivation achieves orders of magnitude reduction in the corrosion rate of stainless steels.

The Ga₂O₃:Sn/Al/HfO_x cascade heterojunctions-based optoelectronic synapses exhibit outstanding linearity in weight updating and thousands of conduction levels, holding promise for applications in logic operations, arithmetic computing, and fingerprint classification.

Max Kieker explains how a technique described in a paper from 1994 inspired him to change his research subject.

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.

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.

Ferroelectric membranes of BaTiO₃ can form centre-convergent polar topology domes that couple with light to generate circularly polarized beams.