Articles in 2019

Double-blind holography allows reconstruction of the missing spectral phases and characterization of the unknown signals in both isolated-pulse and double-pulse scenarios, facilitating the study of complex electron dynamics via a single-shot and linear measurement.

Integrated photonics could allow for the generation, manipulation and detection of quantum light on-chip, opening the path to a scalable, reliable platform for real-world deployment of quantum applications.

The demonstration of Pr³⁺-doped phosphors that exhibit persistent luminescence in the UVC region when exposed to X-rays not only expands the scope of afterglow phosphors, but also offers new opportunities for sensing and biomedicine.

Osamu Shimomura’s 90-year life came to an end on 19 October 2018. Throughout his long and exceedingly fruitful career, the Japanese marine biologist and chemist passionately explored the phenomenon of bioluminescence in living organisms, earning a Nobel Prize in the process.

Quantum correlations from photon antibunching enhance the resolution of image scanning microscopy in biological imaging by twofold, four times beyond the diffraction limit.

Temporal dissipative soliton formation in a free-space femtosecond enhancement cavity with a thin Kerr medium is reported. Locking a 350-fs, 1,035-nm pulse train with a repetition rate of 100 MHz to this cavity-soliton state generates a 37-fs sech²-shaped pulse with a peak-power enhancement of 3,200.

The entanglement of three remote quantum memories based on ⁸⁷Rb atoms is created via three-photon interference by enhancing the memory–photon entanglement in ring cavities, demonstrating a genuine quantum network involving more than two quantum nodes.

This Review discusses recent advances of microwave photonic technologies and their applications in communications and information processing, as well as their potential implementations in quantum and neuromorphic photonics.

Cyclometalated gold(iii) complexes are shown to offer tunable emission colours spanning from sky-blue to red and enable the fabrication of phosphorescent organic light-emitting devices with high external quantum efficiency and long lifetimes.

Robust methods for creating and analysing soft X-ray modes, with as much as 30ħ angular momentum per photon, are demonstrated.

Using a single atom in a cavity to control a propagating optical pulse can deterministically create a Schrödinger-cat state — an intriguing quantum superposition of classically distinct states. The result is a new opportunity for quantum state engineering with potential applications in quantum networks and computation.

An atom–light Schrödinger-cat state is deterministically created by reflecting laser pulses from a high-finesse optical cavity containing a single ⁸⁷Rb atom. A CNOT-type operation is also demonstrated between the atomic qubit and the optical qubit.