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The SLAC Linac Coherent Light Source is now the world's brightest source of coherent ångström-wavelength X-rays. Paul Emma, the man who made this achievement possible, spoke to Nature Photonics about the challenges involved.
Imaging the transient carrier dynamics in semiconductors at both high temporal and spatial resolution has long been a goal for solid-state scientists. Hidemi Shigekawa from the University of Tsukuba in Japan told Nature Photonics how his team accomplished this feat.
Optical grinding and polishing plays an important role when optimizing the quality of an imaging system or minimizing unwanted reflections in a fibre-optic assembly.
The simultaneous control of photon and electron confinement at the nanoscale on an oxide platform may pave the way for optoelectronic devices measuring just a few nanometres in size.
Extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography at 13.5 nm is expected to be introduced in high-volume semiconductor chip production over the next three years. Research is now underway to investigate sub-10-nm light sources that could support lithography over the coming decades.
The century-old field of X-ray physics is being rejuvenated by new forms of ultrabright sources based on laser technology, promising a revolution in imaging capabilities.
Solar cells are poised to play an important role in the development of a clean-energy economy, but their future success depends both on supportive government policies and research efforts to improve conversion efficiencies and bring down costs.
Time-domain measurements have confirmed the existence and compression of optical solitons in nanoscale planar photonic crystal waveguides, giving hope for the future prospects of on-chip nonlinear optical circuits.
Scientists demonstrate a fully integrated and scalable waveguide chip that can control the polarization and intensity of light using a row of independent atomic junctions. The device may enable quantum states of matter and light to be engineered on a microscopic scale.
Researchers report the direct observation of ultrafast magnetic dynamics using the magnetic component of highly intense terahertz wave pulses with a time resolution of 8 fs. This concept provides a universal ultrafast method of visualizing magnetic excitations in the electronic ground state.
Researchers demonstrate a probabilistic noiseless linear amplifier based on photon addition and subtraction. The technique enables coherent states to be amplified to the highest levels of effective gain and final-state fidelity, and could become an essential tool for applications in quantum communication and metrology.
Using ∼1-mm-long photonic crystal waveguides, scientists experimentally demonstrate the compression of 3 ps pulses to a minimum duration of 580 fs at a low pulse energy of ∼20 pJ. The approach may pave the way for soliton applications in integrated photonic chips.
Researchers report rewritable nanoscale photodetectors that exploit 2–3 nm nanowire junctions. Large electromagnetic fields in the gap region aid the detector response, which is electric-field-tunable and spans the visible to near-infrared regime.
Researchers report the generation of isolated sub-160-attosecond pulses that have photon energies of 30 eV, resulting in an on-target pulse energy of a few nanojoules. The availability of attosecond sources with high peak intensities may open new avenues for attosecond pump/probe studies of electronic processes in atomic and molecular physics.
