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Electron avalanche multiplication can enable an all-optical modulator controlled by single photons.

Metamaterials have the counterintuitive optical property of negative refraction index. They have a wide range of possible applications, including 'invisibility cloaks' and perfect lenses, but their performance is severely limited by absorption losses. These authors have incorporated an optical gain medium within a metamaterial as a way to compensate the intrinsic loss, and show that optical pumping leads to a significantly improved negative refraction index and figure of merit within the 722–738-nm visible wavelength range.

Andrew M. Weiner, a luminary in ultrafast optics and quantum photonics passed away on February 13, 2024, at the age of 65. He will be remembered for his profound contributions to the optics and photonics community, engineering, education, and for his devoted mentorship. He leaves behind a legacy of innovation and inspiration.

Holographic techniques provide phase and amplitude information for images of objects, but normally the hologram thickness is comparable to the light wavelength used. Ni et al.present ultra-thin plasmonic holograms that control amplitude and phase in the visible region and are just 30 nm thick.

Though broadband achromatic metalens are attractive for biological applications, existing metalenses show limited performance in the biological imaging window. Here, the authors report high-efficiency broadband achromatic metalens featuring record-high aspect ratio titanium dioxide metasurfaces.

The theory-guided synthesis of a tungsten-based W₂TiC₂T_x MXene from a non-MAX nanolaminated ternary carbide (W,Ti)₄C_4−y is reported. The tungsten-rich basal plane of the W₂TiC₂T_x MXene is then examined for the electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction using a combined experimental and theoretical approach.

Practical low-loss metamaterials at optical frequencies may soon be realized thanks to optical parametric amplification that uses backwards propagation of a signal beam in negative-index metamaterials. Surprisingly, increasing losses at the idler frequency leads to broadband transparency or amplification at the signal frequency.

A material with a cunningly designed optical response overcomes a fundamental limit to image resolution. This 'hyperlens' produces magnified images of objects smaller than the wavelength of the imaging light.

Nonlinear optical properties of transparent conducting oxides are explored through the full spatio-spectral fission of an ultrafast 93-fs pulse traversing a submicrometre time-varying aluminium zinc oxide layer in its near-zero-index region, providing insights into the use of these materials for integrated photonics, photonic time crystals and integrated neural networks.

A molecular aggregate formed in a two-dimensional organic–inorganic hybrid perovskite superlattice with a near-equilibrium distance is shown to have a near-unity photoluminescence quantum yield like that of single molecules, despite being in an aggregated state.

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.

Quantum super-resolution techniques take advantage of the non-classical nature of the quantum emitters, but are time-consuming. Here, the authors present a machine learning-assisted approach for fast antibunching-based super-resolution imaging, with a 12-fold speed up over the conventional approach

Achieving miniature and versatile nanophotonic devices with metasurfaces is of great interest. The authors embed a metasurface inside an optical cavity to reduce thickness and provide degrees of freedom for controlling resonant wavelengths, enabling multi-band filtering, structural colouration and spectral imaging.

Here the authors demonstrate the active control of an all-optical switch harnessing the interaction of light with the constituent materials. The response speeds up by two orders of magnitude and scales accordingly with the strength of the light matter interaction.

Frequency resolved optical gating is the core method for characterising ultra-fast optical pulses. Here, the authors use zero-index nonlinearities to largely enhance key performances and enable simultaneous second and third harmonic measurements.

A plasmonic tweezer combining thermal and electric fields can be used to create fast fluid motion for rapid and accurate positioning of single nanoparticles.

Luminescence is engineered in whole plants, without an exogenous substrate, using a fungal gene cluster.

Materials with a near-zero optical refractive index have stimulated much interest, as they can be used to investigate fundamental light–matter interactions. This Review surveys the wide range of near-zero-index homogeneous materials that have been explored and highlights the key experimental advancements they have enabled.

We study second harmonic generation in photonic time-crystals, and find conditions for which the process is highly enhanced, leading to efficient generation of higher-order harmonics.

Cuprous oxide is a promising solid-state platform for scalable on-chip quantum technologies due to its high-lying Rydberg excitonic states. Here, using a CMOS-compatible growth technique, the bottom-up fabrication of chip-scale site-selective arrays of cuprous oxide microparticles is demonstrated, providing a platform for programmable Rydberg exciton arrays.

Ohmic losses in plasmonic devices can be reduced by exploiting ‘resonant switching’, in which light couples to surface plasmon polaritons only when in resonance and bypasses them otherwise.