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In its optical manifestation, supersymmetry can potentially establish close relationships between seemingly different dielectric structures. Here, the authors use the perfect global phase matching afforded by supersymmetry for mode conversion and mode division multiplexing in highly multimoded systems.

The researchers showcase a microwave-integrated circuit, operating across 1.5–3.0 GHz at micro-Watt power levels, that can perform universal unitary matrix transformations.

Using techniques by analogy with parity–time symmetry allows a combination of optical gain and loss in large-scale synthetic lattices, which can lead, for example, to such a lattice being invisible when viewed from one side.

Plasma channels induced in air by femtosecond-laser filamentation are useful for many applications, including attosecond physics and spectroscopy and remote sensing. By appropriately employing a surrounding auxiliary dressing beam to continuously supply energy to the filament, the natural range of the plasma column has been extended by at least one order of magnitude.

An action generates an equal and opposite reaction. If it were possible, however, for one of the two bodies to have negative mass, they would accelerate each other. A situation analogous to this is now realized in an optical system. Solitons moving in an optical mesh lattice exhibit either an effective positive or negative mass, thus enabling observation of self-acceleration.

Optical beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) are promising candidates for free-space optical communication. The authors devise a hybrid optical-electronic convolutional neural network approach reaching a 4-bit OAM-coded signal demultiplexing accuracy of 72.84% under strong atmospheric turbulence conditions with 3.2 times faster training time than all electronic convolutional neural network.

Parity–time symmetry can impose a stable energy flow in photonic systems with simultaneous amplification and attenuation. Here, Wimmer et al.demonstrate optical solitons belonging to a continuous parametric family of solutions in a parity–time-symmetric lattice and observe saturable absorber action.

Nonreciprocal components are widely used in optical circuits but the magneto-optic effects they are based on pose difficulties for on-chip integration. Here, Ruesink et al. propose an optomechanical scheme to break reciprocity without the need for magnetic fields.

Nonreciprocal optical elements mostly rely on magnetic fields to break time-reversal symmetry, an approach that is difficult to integrate on-chip. Here, Ruesink et al. describe and demonstrate 4-port circulation at telecom wavelengths using a magnetic-field-free optomechanical resonator.

The authors introduce a computational paradigm termed “entropy computing” to solve combinatorial optimization problems using an open quantum system, where engineered dissipations are employed to stabilize the system state to the ground state of a desired Hamiltonian and show that it can be realized on photonic hardware. Finally, they experimentally show its strong performance on max-cut related problems.

Physics-inspired algorithms are being developed to solve NP-hard problems while alleviating issues with scaling and trapping in local minima. Here, a method to search the global minimum of the Potts Hamiltonian with a photonic-inspired model is proposed.