Articles in 2013

Strain in photonic structures can induce pseudomagnetic fields and Landau levels. Nature Photonics spoke to Mordechai Segev, Mikael Rechtsman, Alexander Szameit and Julia Zeuner about their unique approach.

Obtaining new insights into yet unexplained phenomena and making the impossible possible are among the main motivations for any scientist. Going beyond limitations is the key challenge.

Using strain to induce a pseudomagnetic field in a photonic lattice at optical frequencies might bring improvements to fields such as photonic crystal fibres, supercontinuum generation and frequency combs.

By enlisting help from a robot to assemble precise structures, researchers have guided telecommunications-wavelength light around multiple hairpin turns in a three-dimensional photonic crystal.

The ability to dynamically image features deep within living organisms, permitting real-time analysis of cellular structure and function, is important for biological science. This Review article discusses multiphoton microscopy capable of such analysis, along with technologies that are pushing the limits of phenomena that can be quantitatively imaged.

It's challenging to measure non-repetitive events in real time in the field of instrumentation and measurement. Dispersive Fourier transformation is an emerging method that permits capture of rare events, such as optical rogue waves and rare cancer cells in blood. This Review article covers the principle of dispersive Fourier transformation and its implementation in diverse applications.

Through simultaneous five-photon absorption, scientists observe efficient frequency-upconverted stimulated emission from the mid- or near-infrared to the visible region in a novel fluorophore. The fifth-order dependence on the input light intensity provides much stronger spatial confinement than lower-order nonlinear absorption, thus offering much higher contrast for imaging.

The concept of an optical pulling force, or ‘tractor beam’, has received increasing interest following recent theoretical proposals. Scientists have now experimentally verified this concept and demonstrated that the orientation of the beam's linear polarization strongly influences the behaviour of the object being pulled, in particular the direction of its delivery.

Three-photon microscopy performed at the infrared wavelength of 1,700 nm makes it possible to image hard-to-reach vascular structures and labelled neurons in the hippocampus of a mouse brain.

Researchers observe Rabi oscillations in a metal structure with a J-aggregate nonlinear medium and coherent energy transfer between excitonic quantum emitters and surface plasmons. The coupling energy is controlled on the 10 fs timescale by varying the exciton density. This work demonstrates the potential of nonlinear ultrafast plasmonics.

Researchers provide tight bounds for the classical information capacity of a Bosonic thermal noise channel. They also compare these limits with the well-known lower bound of the channel and an upper bound first introduced by Holevo and Werner in their seminal work on the subject.

By recording digital holograms created from different illumination directions and subsequently processing them in a complex deconvolution scheme, scientists are able to capture details of living biological samples with subwavelength resolution.

Researchers demonstrate the three-dimensional routing of light through a three-dimensional photonic crystal. Before transmission, the light is bent both vertically and horizontally, split and trapped.

Researchers use sideband injection-locked lasers to generate low-noise, high-frequency radio signals that can be tuned over the range of 0.5–110 GHz. This technique is amenable to compact integration and, in principle, operation at even higher frequencies.

Researchers detect nanoparticles and viruses with a field-of-view of 20 mm² by using an optical scheme that employs digital holographic microscopy and self-assembled liquid nanolenses.

Researchers present a quantum receiver based on a novel adaptive measurement scheme and a high-bandwidth, high-detection-efficiency system for single-photon counting. The receiver unconditionally discriminates between four nonorthogonal coherent states with error probabilities 6 dB below the standard quantum limit for a wide range of input powers.