Optics and photonics articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Recently, long spin coherence times have been predicted for spin defects in simple oxides. Here, by using high-throughput first-principles calculations, the authors identify promising spin defects in CaO, with electronic properties similar to those of NV centers but with longer coherence times.

    • Joel Davidsson
    • , Mykyta Onizhuk
    •  & Giulia Galli

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Transition metal perovskite oxide membranes are promising platforms for infrared polaritonics. Here, the authors experimentally demonstrate highly confined epsilon-near-zero modes and propagating surface phonon polaritons in high-quality SrTiO3 membranes with deep subwavelength thickness.

    • Ruijuan Xu
    • , Iris Crassee
    •  & Yin Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Perturbing a physical system, for example, picking a guitar string to make it vibrate, tells a lot about its intrinsic properties. Here the authors show that such concepts hold even for quantum gases of light, which respond to a perturbation with the same dynamics as they fluctuate on their own.

    • Alexander Sazhin
    • , Vladimir N. Gladilin
    •  & Julian Schmitt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    On-chip optical sensing and metrology systems are rapidly progressing, but CMOS-compatible silicon light sources remain a challenge. This work demonstrates a broadband, foundry integrated silicon waveguide emitter and the theory that describes it.

    • Marcel W. Pruessner
    • , Nathan F. Tyndall
    •  & Todd H. Stievater

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors introduce a highspeed acquisition technique, sHAPR, for rapid exploration of biodynamics using fluorescence microscopy. The method leverages sCMOS cameras and custom fibre optics to convert microscopy images into 1D recordings, enabling acquisition at the maximum camera readout rate.

    • Biagio Mandracchia
    • , Corey Zheng
    •  & Shu Jia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    By resonant pumping the organic cation in 2D perovskite, Fu et al. report the electronic and mechanical couplings between the organic and inorganic sublattices, evidenced by the reduced bandgap and modified lattice degree of freedom within the inorganic sublattice, and slow heat transfer process.

    • Jianhui Fu
    • , Tieyuan Bian
    •  & Tze Chien Sum

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors demonstrate ultrabroadband, polarisation-independent directional control of thermal radiation using a pixelated micro-emitter, and produce large emissivity contrast at different directions, with potential applications to radiative cooling, infrared spectroscopy and thermophotovoltaics.

    • Ziwei Fan
    • , Taeseung Hwang
    •  & Zi Jing Wong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Lee et al. developed ultrathin metallic (metal filling ratios of > 70 %) metamaterials that exhibit perfect transmission at a specific radar frequency. These characteristics enable microwave transparent, low-sheet-resistance radar heaters for safe autonomous driving in extreme weather.

    • Eun-Joo Lee
    • , Jun-Young Kim
    •  & Sun-Kyung Kim

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Efficient radiation is essential to reach thermodynamic limit of photovoltaic efficiency. Here, authors design thick quantum barriers to suppress interfacial quenching and boost photon recycling in perovskite cells, achieving high radiation and photovoltaic efficiencies and long device stability.

    • Kyung Mun Yeom
    • , Changsoon Cho
    •  & Jun Hong Noh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The researchers showcase a silicon-photonics-based analog approach for large-scale image processing that can be deployed for high-speed image compression and de-noising using an auto-encoder framework with minimal power consumption.

    • Xiao Wang
    • , Brandon Redding
    •  & Raktim Sarma

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Researchers demonstrate that image-processing metasurfaces can be dynamically reconfigured by using phase-change materials. The work might lead to novel tunable devices for compact optical computing for applications in AR/VR and bio-medical imaging.

    • Michele Cotrufo
    • , Shaban B. Sulejman
    •  & Andrea Alù

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A consistency issue with the production of porous polymer-based radiative coatings can be a significant drop in the cooling performance when dried under humid conditions. This issue is efficiently resolved by adding polymer reinforcement.

    • Dongpyo Hong
    • , Yong Joon Lee
    •  & Sang Yoon Park

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Photoluminescence from plasmonic nanostructures exhibits diverse wavelength dependent nonlinear behaviors with debated origins. Here, authors use plasmonic gap mode resonators with precise nanoscale confinement to show this nonlinear emission can become dominated by non-Fermi carrier contributions.

    • Robert Lemasters
    • , Manoj Manjare
    •  & Hayk Harutyunyan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Polaritons – hybrid light-matter excitations – in van der Waals materials hold promise for photonics applications below the diffraction limit. Here, the authors demonstrate in-plane steering and cloaking of phonon polaritons in assembled micro-structures based on α-MoO3 films with misaligned crystallographic orientations.

    • Hanchao Teng
    • , Na Chen
    •  & Qing Dai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Metasurface-based architectures enhance light-matter interactions between a terahertz photonic mode and glucose vibrational resonance. This platform allows new physical and chemical properties of hybrid light-matter states to be exploited.

    • Ahmed Jaber
    • , Michael Reitz
    •  & Jean-Michel Ménard

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this work, authors synthesize transparent radiative cooling cover windows for flexible and foldable electronic devices. Besides demonstrated enhanced mechanical and moisture-impermeable properties, these mitigate temperature rise of devices under solar irradiation and improve overall thermal management.

    • Kang Won Lee
    • , Jonghun Yi
    •  & Dong Rip Kim

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Traditional scintillators face challenges in achieving fast response and avoiding afterglow. Guzelturk et al. report colloidal quantum shell heterostructures with bright multiexciton emission, enabling efficient, fast, and robust scintillation for high-resolution and high-speed X-ray imaging.

    • Burak Guzelturk
    • , Benjamin T. Diroll
    •  & Mikhail Zamkov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors introduce Photoacoustic Tomography with Temporal Encoding Reconstruction (PATTERN) - a high-speed, non-destructive photoacoustic brain imaging technique that constructs 3D fluorescent maps of the brain and improves upon some of the limitations associated with traditional whole-brain optical imaging techniques.

    • Yuwen Chen
    • , Haoyu Yang
    •  & Bo Lei

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors demonstrate a laser system that can directly output soliton microcombs, with high power efficiency and reconfigurability, paving the way for communication, computing, and metrology based on integrated photonics.

    • Jingwei Ling
    • , Zhengdong Gao
    •  & Qiang Lin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors demonstrated an unprecedented level of polarization squeezing of light generated by an atomic ensemble, and a new regime of continuous quantum measurements on a macroscopic material oscillator.

    • Christian Bærentsen
    • , Sergey A. Fedorov
    •  & Eugene S. Polzik

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biosensing tools to detect multiple analytes in a high-throughput manner are still hindered by many limitations. Here, the authors present a label-free optofluidic platform integrating digital holography and microfluidics for analyte detection, allowing for the fingerprinting of heterogenous biological samples.

    • Alexia Stollmann
    • , Jose Garcia-Guirado
    •  & Romain Quidant

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Lead toxification in society is a public health crisis. The exposure to lead poisoning gives rise to a multitude of health issues. In this work, a chip-scale photonic platform that enables the highly quantitative detection of lead is demonstrated.

    • Luigi Ranno
    • , Yong Zen Tan
    •  & Jia Xu Brian Sia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The laser pulses that drive most laser wakefield accelerators have wavelengths near 1 micrometer and peak power > 100 terawatts. Here, the authors drive plasma wakes with 10 micrometer, 2-terawatt pulses, yielding relativistic electron beams with a collimated, narrow-energy-bandwidth component.

    • R. Zgadzaj
    • , J. Welch
    •  & M. C. Downer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors have developed a superconducting microwave frequency comb that is fully integrated, easy to manufacture, and operates with ultra-low power consumption, and could significantly advance microwave photonics and quantum processor integration.

    • Chen-Guang Wang
    • , Wuyue Xu
    •  & Peiheng Wu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Color centers in diamond have been proposed as a link between remote superconducting units in hybrid quantum systems, where their orbital degree of freedom is utilized. Here the authors report coherent electric-field control of the orbital state of a neutral NV center in diamond.

    • Hodaka Kurokawa
    • , Keidai Wakamatsu
    •  & Hideo Kosaka

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Surface acoustic wave devices enable modern electronics and are desirable for quantum systems. Here the authors access and control these devices optically, enabling high acoustic quality factors, materials spectroscopy, and hybrid quantum systems.

    • Arjun Iyer
    • , Yadav P. Kandel
    •  & William H. Renninger

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Carbon nanotube-based single photon emitters allow for room-temperature operation, but suffer from vanishing indistinguishability due to strong dephasing. Following a theoretical proposal, the authors tackle the problem experimentally by using a cavity to enhance the photon coherence time and the emission spectral density in the regime of incoherent good cavity-coupling.

    • Lukas Husel
    • , Julian Trapp
    •  & Alexander Högele

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Inspired by fireflies, a bimodal information indication system using a photochemical afterglow material within a photonic crystal matrix is developed to display both static and changing information, such as sample type and degree of degradation.

    • Hanwen Huang
    • , Jiamiao Yin
    •  & Changchun Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors require operation at T < 4 K, and successful attempts to extend their operation at 20 K and above using high-TC BSCCO flakes come at the cost of lower scalability to large areas. Here, the authors break this trade-off by using high-quality MgB2 films and exploiting a helium-ion beam-based irradiation process.

    • Ilya Charaev
    • , Emma K. Batson
    •  & Karl K. Berggren

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors present nonvolatile optical phase shift induced by ferroelectric hafnium zirconium oxide deposited on a SiN waveguide. This finding paves the way for largescale programmable photonic circuits for communication, computing, and sensing.

    • Kazuma Taki
    • , Naoki Sekine
    •  & Mitsuru Takenaka

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Achieving acoustic waveguides with low loss, tailorability, and easy fabrication is a considerable challenge. Here, the authors introduce suspended anti-resonant acoustic waveguides with superior confinement and high selectivity of acoustic modes, supporting both forward and backward SBS on chip.

    • Peng Lei
    • , Mingyu Xu
    •  & Xiaopeng Xie

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sublattice symmetry has long been synonymous with chiral symmetry when it comes to topological classification. Here, the authors challenge this notion by systematically investigating sublattice symmetry and revealing its spatial nature with a precise description in terms of symmetry algebra and representation.

    • Rong Xiao
    •  & Y. X. Zhao

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