Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Room-temperature, optically pumped GaAs/AlGaAs/GaAs nanowire lasers have been realized. Dhruv Saxena and Sudha Mokkapati from the Australian National University discuss this breakthrough.
Efficient photocatalytic splitting of water to realize carbon-free production of hydrogen from sunlight remains a challenge. New precious-metal-free molecular catalysts in semiconductor-based, visible-light-driven water-splitting systems are promising for realizing practical artificial photosynthesis.
A growing family of iPad and iPhone apps launched by publishers, institutes and societies active in photonics now makes it easy to keep up to date with the latest happenings in optics.
The experimental observation of topologically protected photonic edge transport in a silicon chip paves the way to realizing unprecedented control of light using synthetic magnetic fields and opens up new approaches for optical information processing.
Hyperbolic, or indefinite, metamaterials are reviewed. These anisotropic materials may exhibit properties such as strong enhancement of spontaneous emission, diverging density of states, negative refraction and superlensing.
Clear evidence is presented for the origins of photocurrent generation in metallic and semiconducting carbon nanotubes — photocurrent is found to be mainly generated by photothermal and photovoltaic effects in metallic and semiconducting carbon nanotubes, respectively. This finding will enable the engineering of highly efficient carbon-based photodetectors and energy-harvesting devices.
The use of Raman spectroscopy for high-resolution optical imaging is severely limited by the inherent weakness of the Raman effect. Now, a giant resonant Raman effect is demonstrated from J-aggregated dye molecules encapsulated in single-walled carbon nanotubes, and it is used to realize multispectral Raman imaging.
Perpendicular photoswitching of the polarization plane of the output second-harmonic light is observed in a chiral spin-crossover assembly based on an iron-octacyanoniobate magnet. This photoswitching can be reversed by irradiating with blue or red light. It originates from alternate photoswitching between the crystallographic and magnetic contributions to second-harmonic generation.
Room-temperature lasing in core–shell–cap GaAs/AlGaAs/GaAs nanowires is demonstrated using optical pumping. It is realized by employing a Fabry–Pérot cavity along with material optimization and surface recombination minimization. This demonstration should prove useful for designing nanoscale optoelectronic devices operating at near-infrared wavelengths.
A continuous-variable cluster state containing more than 10,000 entangled modes is deterministically generated and fully characterized. The developed time-domain multiplexing method allows each quantum mode to be manipulated by the same optical components at different times. An efficient scheme for measurement-based quantum computation on this cluster state is presented.
An approach is demonstrated that allows the optical transmission matrix to be noninvasively measured over a large volume inside complex samples using a standard photoacoustic imaging set-up. This approach opens the way towards deep-tissue imaging and light delivery utilizing endogenous optical contrast.
The carrier-envelope phase of laser fields at metal tips can affect the generation and motion of strong-field emitted electrons. Observed variations in the width of plateau-like photoelectron spectra characteristic of the sub-cycle regime may lead to the control of coherent electron motion at metallic nanostructures on ultrashort lengths and timescales.
An easily implementable reconstruction scheme is demonstrated for determining the full vectorial amplitude and relative phase distributions of highly confined electromagnetic fields with subwavelength resolution from a single-scan measurement. This scheme will help improve microscopy and nanoscopy techniques.
A new laser-field measurement technique is demonstrated that exploits nonlinear optical mixing in a gas in which attosecond pulses are being generated. The instantaneous field of an unknown pulse is imprinted onto the deflection of an attosecond pulse using an all-optical set-up with a bandwidth of up to 1 PHz.
