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Spectral purity can now be transferred from one laser to another with a very different wavelength at an order of magnitude better than previously achievable. Yann Le Coq spoke to Nature Photonics about the new development.
A source of entangled photons that emits one — and only one — pair of photons on demand has now been realized in a semiconductor chip. The solid-state source will be a useful resource for experiments in optical quantum information.
Researchers have demonstrated a compact, high-speed, surface-plasmon phase modulator that operates at telecommunication wavelengths over a wide range of operational conditions. It has the potential to boost the speed of future miniaturized integrated circuits.
Although still in its infancy, attosecond science has already captured the imagination of the scientific community with its promise of enabling rapidly evolving phenomena in nature to be investigated.
A clever extension to a classic phase-contrast microscope allows speckle-free three-dimensional quantitative phase imaging of living cells in a tomographic imaging mode.
Even for simple systems, the interpretations of new attosecond measurements are complicated and provide only a glimpse of their potential. Nonetheless, the lasting impact will be the revelation of how short-time dynamics can determine the electronic properties of more complex systems.
Attosecond science allows the role of electronic coherence in the control of chemical reactions in molecular systems to be investigated. This article reviews recent activities in attosecond molecular science and identifies some promising directions for further development.
This review discusses significant recent advances in the generation, characterization and application of ultrabroadband isolated attosecond pulses with a spectral bandwidth comparable to the central frequency, which can in principle be compressed to a single optical cycle.
Attosecond light pulses are used for ultrahigh-resolution observations of ultrafast phenomena in atoms, molecules and condensed matter. Measuring the durations of such pulses is challenging because the spectrum lies in the vacuum ultraviolet or soft-X-ray range. This article reviews and compares two methods — photoionization and photorecombination — for measuring the duration of attosecond pulses.
This article reviews the basic concepts underlying attosecond measurement and control techniques. Emphasis is given to exploring the fundamental speed limit of electronic signal processing that employs ultimate-speed electron metrology provided by attosecond technology.
An integrated nanoscale light-emitting diode is used as an electrically driven optical source for exciting two-dimensionally localized gap plasmon waveguides with a 0.016λ2 cross-sectional area. Electrically driven subwavelength optical nanocircuits for routing, splitting and directional coupling are demonstrated in compact and relatively low-loss gap plasmon waveguide structures.
Polarization-entangled photon pairs are generated from an In(Ga)As quantum dot by setting the pump intensity such that the inversion of the quantum dot from the ground to the biexcitonic state is the most probable transition. On-demand generation is demonstrated with an ultrahigh purity, a high entanglement fidelity and high two-photon-interference non-post-selective visibilities.
The first observation of a third-order process induced by an X-ray beam from a free-electron laser is realized in germanium using a 5.6-keV X-ray beam. Two-photon absorption is confirmed, suggesting that X-ray analogues of other third-order nonlinear processes may be available for exploitation in X-ray experiments.
