Ultrafast photonics articles within Nature

Featured

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Time-resolved photoelectron circular dichroism with a temporal resolution of 2.9 fs is used to track the ultrafast electron dynamics following ultraviolet excitation of neutral chiral molecules, which generate chiral currents that exhibit periodic rotation direction reversal.

    • Vincent Wanie
    • , Etienne Bloch
    •  & Francesca Calegari

  • Article
    | Open Access

    We introduce strong tailored light-wave-driven time-reversal symmetry breaking in monolayer hexagonal boron nitride, realizing a sub-laser-cycle controllable analogue of the topological model of Haldane and inducing non-resonant valley polarization.

    • Sambit Mitra
    • , Álvaro Jiménez-Galán
    •  & Shubhadeep Biswas

  • Article |

    A scalable nanophotonic electron accelerator with a high particle acceleration gradient and good beam confinement achieves an energy gain of 43%.

    • Tomáš Chlouba
    • , Roy Shiloh
    •  & Peter Hommelhoff

  • Article
    | Open Access

    All-optical, mode-selective manipulation of the crystal lattice can be used to enhance and stabilize ferromagnetism in YTiO3 well above its equilibrium ordering temperature and for many nanoseconds, enabling dynamic engineering of practically useful non-equilibrium functionalities in fluctuating electronic systems.

    • A. S. Disa
    • , J. Curtis
    •  & A. Cavalleri

  • Article |

    Two-colour modulation spectroscopy of laser field-driven electrons uncovers the suboptical-cycle strong-field emission dynamics from nanostructures with attosecond precision by measuring photoelectron spectra of electrons as function of the relative phase between the two colours.

    • Philip Dienstbier
    • , Lennart Seiffert
    •  & Peter Hommelhoff

  • Article |

    The build-up and dephasing of Floquet-–Bloch bands is visualized in both subcycle band-structure videography and quantum theory, revealing the interplay of strong-field intraband and interband excitations in a non-equilibrium Floquet picture.

    • S. Ito
    • , M. Schüler
    •  & R. Huber

  • Article |

    By forcing electron–hole pairs onto closed trajectories attosecond clocking of delocalized Bloch electrons is achieved, enabling greater understanding of unexpected phase transitions and quantum-dynamic phenomena.

    • J. Freudenstein
    • , M. Borsch
    •  & R. Huber

  • Article |

    Light-field control of real and virtual charge carriers in a gold–graphene–gold heterostructure is demonstrated, and used to create a logic gate for application in lightwave electronics.

    • Tobias Boolakee
    • , Christian Heide
    •  & Peter Hommelhoff

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Suitably shaped X-ray pulses are used to coherently steer the quantum dynamics of atoms’ nuclei rather than their electrons, with few-zeptosecond temporal stability of the phase control.

    • Kilian P. Heeg
    • , Andreas Kaldun
    •  & Jörg Evers

  • Article |

    The coupling between light and relativistic free electrons is enhanced through phase matching of electrons with optical whispering-gallery modes in dielectric microspheres and through extended modal lifetimes.

    • Ofer Kfir
    • , Hugo Lourenço-Martins
    •  & Claus Ropers

  • Article |

    The strong interaction of coherent free electrons with a photonic-crystal cavity enables the measurement of the lifetimes of the cavity modes and provides a technique for multidimensional near-field imaging and spectroscopy.

    • Kangpeng Wang
    • , Raphael Dahan
    •  & Ido Kaminer

  • Letter |

    The magnetic properties of a ferromagnetic layer stack are controlled on attosecond timescales through optically induced spin and orbital momentum transfer, demonstrating a coherent regime of ultrafast magnetism.

    • Florian Siegrist
    • , Julia A. Gessner
    •  & Martin Schultze

  • Letter |

    Room-temperature modulation frequencies exceeding 200 GHz are demonstrated in birefringent semiconductor spin-lasers by coupling the spin of the charge carriers to the light polarization.

    • Markus Lindemann
    • , Gaofeng Xu
    •  & Nils C. Gerhardt

  • Letter |

    Femtosecond time-resolved X-ray diffraction reveals that in the ultrafast demagnitization of ferromagnetic iron, about 80% of the angular momentum lost from the spins is transferred to the lattice on a sub-picosecond timescale.

    • C. Dornes
    • , Y. Acremann
    •  & S. L. Johnson

  • Letter |

    A refractive lens and a refractive prism for extreme-ultraviolet radiation have been developed that use the deflection of the radiation in an inhomogeneous jet of atoms.

    • L. Drescher
    • , O. Kornilov
    •  & B. Schütte

  • Letter |

    Light-field-driven control of electrons in a conductor is demonstrated by inducing a current by laser pulses in graphene that is sensitive to the carrier-envelope phase.

    • Takuya Higuchi
    • , Christian Heide
    •  & Peter Hommelhoff

  • Letter |

    Few-femtosecond laser pulses are used to generate squeezed mid-infrared light transients and to detect distorted quantum fluctuations of the electric field directly in the time domain.

    • C. Riek
    • , P. Sulzer
    •  & A. Leitenstorfer

  • Letter |

    Watching a single molecule move calls for measurements that combine ultrafast temporal resolution with atomic spatial resolution; this is now shown to be possible by combining scanning tunnelling microscopy with lightwave electronics, through a technique that involves removing a single electron from the highest occupied orbital of a single pentacene molecule in a time window shorter than an oscillation cycle of light.

    • Tyler L. Cocker
    • , Dominik Peller
    •  & Rupert Huber

  • Letter |

    Investigations using single-cycle intense optical fields to drive electron motion in bulk silicon dioxide show that the light-induced electric currents extend in frequency up to about 8 petahertz.

    • M. Garg
    • , M. Zhan
    •  & E. Goulielmakis

  • Letter |

    A quasiparticle collider is developed that uses femtosecond optical pulses to create electron–hole pairs in the layered dichalcogenide tungsten diselenide, and a strong terahertz field to accelerate and collide the electrons with the holes.

    • F. Langer
    • , M. Hohenleutner
    •  & R. Huber

  • Letter |

    The generation of high harmonics in the solid phase is studied with time-resolved measurements and a quantum many-body theory; the underlying motion of electrons is found to differ from that observed during high-harmonic generation in atomic gases, and involves quantum interference between electrons from multiple valence bands.

    • M. Hohenleutner
    • , F. Langer
    •  & R. Huber

  • Letter |

    The ‘time cloak’ experiment is extended here using a time analogue of the Talbot effect in optics — in which a plane wave incident on a diffraction grating produces repeated images of the grating at regular distances — to show that almost half of the time axis can be concealed.

    • Joseph M. Lukens
    • , Daniel E. Leaird
    •  & Andrew M. Weiner

  • Letter |

    The ultrafast reversibility of changes to the electronic structure and electric polarizability of a dielectric with the electric field of a laser pulse, demonstrated here, offers the potential for petahertz-bandwidth optical signal manipulation.

    • Martin Schultze
    • , Elisabeth M. Bothschafter
    •  & Ferenc Krausz

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