Optical physics articles within Nature

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  • Article |

    With the start-up of the first X-ray free-electron laser, a new era has begun in dynamical studies of atoms. Here the facility is used to study the fundamental nature of the electronic response in free neon atoms. During a single X-ray pulse, they sequentially eject all their ten electrons to produce fully stripped neon. The authors explain this electron-stripping in a straightforward model, auguring favourably for further studies of interactions of X-rays with more complex systems.

    • L. Young
    • , E. P. Kanter
    •  & M. Messerschmidt

  • News & Views |

    The world's first kiloelectronvolt X-ray laser produces such a high flux of photons that atoms can be 'cored'. In other words, the light source can knock out both the electrons of an atom's innermost shell.

    • Justin Wark

  • Letter |

    A quantum memory would enable storage and retrieval of a quantum state of light without corrupting the information it carries. Previous devices have had low efficiencies of less than 17 per cent, and used weak quantum states with an average photon number of around one. Now a solid-state quantum memory is described with an efficiency of up to 69 per cent, which performs better than a classical device for bright states of up to 500 photons.

    • Morgan P. Hedges
    • , Jevon J. Longdell
    •  & Matthew J. Sellars

  • Letter |

    Over the past few decades, two techniques in particular have opened up new avenues for probing molecular processes: ultrafast spectroscopy and single-molecule detection. The two approaches have now been combined, enabling not only the observation but also the manipulation of vibrational wave-packet interference at ambient conditions. The technique could help to unravel details of molecular function and dynamics in systems as diverse as light-harvesting complexes, photoactive proteins and conjugated polymers.

    • Daan Brinks
    • , Fernando D. Stefani
    •  & Niek F. van Hulst

  • News & Views |

    A subtle quantum-interference effect has been used to control the optical response of a single atom confined in a cavity. It could offer a means to develop logic gates for an optical quantum computer.

    • Scott Parkins

  • News & Views |

    The chaotic motion of light rays gives microlasers surprising emission properties, enhancing quantum tunnelling by many orders of magnitude and producing highly directional output beams.

    • A. Douglas Stone

  • Letter |

    Electromagnetically induced transparency enables the transmission of a laser pulse through an optically dense medium to be manipulated using a control beam. Here this technique is scaled down to a single atom, which acts as a quantum-optical transistor with the ability to coherently control the transmission of light through a cavity. This may lead to novel quantum applications, such as dynamic control of the photon statistics of propagating light fields.

    • Martin Mücke
    • , Eden Figueroa
    •  & Gerhard Rempe

  • Letter |

    Light beams can be engineered to carry orbital angular momentum, with application as, for instance, optical 'spanners' — essentially a 'twisted' variant of the more familiar optical tweezers. Here it is shown that it is, in principle, possible to engineer similar behaviour into an electron beam. Such a beam could find use in a variety of spectroscopy and microscopy techniques.

    • Masaya Uchida
    •  & Akira Tonomura

  • Article |

    A phase transition occurs when a physical system suddenly changes state, for instance when it melts or freezes. The Dicke model describes a collective matter–light interaction and has been predicted to show a quantum phase transition. Here, this quantum phase transition has been realized in an open system formed by a Bose–Einstein condensate coupled to an optical cavity. Surprisingly, the atoms are observed to self-organize into a supersolid phase.

    • Kristian Baumann
    • , Christine Guerlin
    •  & Tilman Esslinger

  • Letter |

    To integrate microchips with optical communications a photodetector is required to mediate the optical and electronic signals. Although germanium photodetectors are compatible with silicon their performance is impaired by poor intrinsic noise. Here the noise is reduced by nanometre engineering of optical and electrical fields to produce a compact and efficient photodetector.

    • Solomon Assefa
    • , Fengnian Xia
    •  & Yurii A. Vlasov

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