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Since the inception of the idea of temporal solitons in optical fibres, published in 1973, the concept of optical solitons has revolutionized the fundamental science of optics and photonics technologies. This Perspective gives an outlook on the future of solitons in ultrafast lasers, frequency combs, biomedical applications, telecommunications and signal processing, as well as the emerging new science of solitons.
Event-based detectors, which respond to local changes in light intensity rather than producing images, enable super-resolution single-molecule localization microscopy with sensitivity and resolution comparable to conventional methods.
The demonstration of a low-loss diamond mirror cavity that can temporally store X-ray pulses brings hope for a future generation of X-ray free electron lasers.
Platforms enabling control over strong light–matter interactions in optical cavities provide a challenging but promising way to manipulate emergent light–matter hybrids. Spin selectivity of transitions has now been demonstrated in a two-dimensional hole gas microcavity system, paving the way towards the study of new spin physics phenomena in hybrid excitations.
Vibrations of individual molecules are difficult to detect due to thermal noise. In a recent report, researchers overcome this challenge, upconverting mid-infrared photons into visible light using nanophotonic cavities. The result is high-efficiency optical readout for single-molecule vibrational spectroscopy.
Precise measurements of the length of an Earth day are essential for understanding global mass transport phenomena. A ring laser gyroscope provides absolute measurements of variations in the length of the day with a resolution of 5 parts per billion over a 14-day period.
A diffractive axicon (a device that diffracts the input light pulse radially) enables complex correlations between the topological charges and the frequencies of ultrashort laser pulses, resulting in a variety of ultrashort coiled light structures.
Researchers have developed efficient electro-optic tools for manipulating the time and frequency of single photons by taking inspiration from Fresnel lenses.
The introduction of a two-step deconvolution workflow maximizes the detection of fluorescence in fluctuation-based super-resolution imaging, enabling a square millimetre field of view to be captured in as little as ten minutes.
A transmission electron microscopy technique enables movies of optical near-fields to be recorded with a temporal resolution faster than the oscillation of optical electric fields.
Contrary to intuition, photons do not have to be indistinguishable for maximum photon bunching to occur. Partially indistinguishable photons can exhibit pronounced bunching.