- Current Issue
- Archive
Volume 14 Issue 7，2025
News & Views
Abstract：Electron-induced colour routers actively manipulate dichromatic photon momentum at deep subwavelength scales, enabling programmable encrypted displays with enhanced security and high integration for advanced photonic applications.4|3|0Updated：2025-07-11- Abstract：An optimized quantum network design is demonstrated by realizing a state-multiplexing quantum light source via a dual-excitation configuration technique. This approach optimizes the usage of the finite wavelength spectrum, facilitating the efficient expansion of entanglement-based fully-connected quantum networks across multiple users.3|3|0Updated：2025-07-11
- Abstract：Dispersion engineering is advancing with recent breakthroughs in metasurfaces using the 2nd-order Debye relaxation and the folded-path concept, greatly improving relevant applications such as imaging, beam shaping, and cloaking.4|3|0Updated：2025-07-11
Light People
Abstract：As depicted in ancient Greek mythology, Prometheus couldn't bear the sight of humanity struggling in the darkness, crafted a long reed, and took the risk of approaching the sun to steal fire. He fearlessly brought this light to the world, defying what Zeus had ordered the gods not to do. His brave act ushered in the dawn of civilization for mankind. In this issue of "Light People", Professor Rui Wang is invited to share stories about his adventures in improving perovskite solar cells for the full utilization of sunlight in daily lives, much like Prometheus bringing the gift of light to humanity. Perovskite solar cells hold great potential for both civilian applications and commercial purposes, such as rooftop solar panels, solar chargers, and solar-powered vehicles.4|3|0Updated：2025-07-11Reviews
Abstract：This review examines imaging-based nanophotonic biosensing and interferometric label-free imaging, with a particular focus on vesicle detection. It specifically compares dielectric and plasmonic metasurfaces for label-free protein and extracellular vesicle detection, highlighting their respective advantages and limitations. Key topics include: (ⅰ) refractometric sensing principles using resonant dielectric and plasmonic surfaces; (ⅱ) state-of-the-art developments in both plasmonic and dielectric nanostructured resonant surfaces; (ⅲ) a detailed comparison of resonance characteristics, including amplitude, quality factor, and evanescent field enhancement; and (ⅳ) the relationship between sensitivity, near-field enhancement, and analyte overlap in different sensing platforms. The review provides insights into the fundamental differences between plasmonic and dielectric platforms, discussing their fabrication, integration potential, and suitability for various analyte sizes. It aims to offer a unified, application-oriented perspective on the potential of these resonant surfaces for biosensing and imaging, aiming at addressing topics of interest for both photonics experts and potential users of these technologies.5|2|0Updated：2025-07-11- Abstract：In the 5 G era, the demand for high-capacity and fast fiber-optic communication underscores the importance of inorganic optical materials with high electro-optical (EO) coefficients, rapid responses, and stability for efficient electro-optical modulators. The exploration of novel EO materials and their applications remains in the early stages. At present, research mainly focuses on the performance of EO materials and devices. However, the EO coefficients of different preparation methods for the same material and different materials vary significantly. Currently, a crucial gap lies in understanding the link between the EO effect and ferroelectric polarization, hindering advancements in ferroelectric material optimization. This article offers a comprehensive insight into the EO effect, initially discussing ferroelectric polarization and its relationship to the phenomenon. It then reviews standard inorganic ABO3 metal oxide ferroelectric ceramics and thin films, followed by an examination of emerging ferroelectrics such as HfO2-based polymorph ferroelectrics and ZnO/AlN-based materials. The article concludes by addressing the challenges in investigating ferroelectric EO mechanisms and provides an outlook on the future of EO material research, including a review of the latest developments in EO effect mechanisms and their optimization for light modulation, as well as an exploration of potential areas for high-performance EO materials research.4|3|0Updated：2025-07-11
Original Articles
Abstract：Light-matter interactions are frequently perceived as predominantly influenced by the electric field, with the magnetic component of light often overlooked. Nonetheless, the magnetic field plays a pivotal role in various optical processes, including chiral light-matter interactions, photon-avalanching, and forbidden photochemistry, underscoring the significance of manipulating magnetic processes in optical phenomena. Here, we explore the ability to control the magnetic light and matter interactions at the nanoscale. In particular, we demonstrate experimentally, using a plasmonic nanostructure, the transfer of energy from the magnetic nearfield to a nanoparticle, thanks to the subwavelength magnetic confinement allowed by our nano-antenna. This control is made possible by the particular design of our plasmonic nanostructure, which has been optimized to spatially decouple the electric and magnetic components of localized plasmonic fields. Furthermore, by studying the spontaneous emission from the Lanthanide-ions doped nanoparticle, we observe that the measured field distributions are not spatially correlated with the experimentally estimated electric and magnetic local densities of states of this antenna, in contradiction with what would be expected from reciprocity. We demonstrate that this counter-intuitive observation is, in fact, the result of the different optical paths followed by the excitation and emission of the ions, which forbids a direct application of the reciprocity theorem.3|3|0Updated：2025-07-11- Abstract：Links and knots are exotic topological structures that have garnered significant interest across multiple branches of natural sciences. Coherent links and knots, such as those constructed by phase or polarization singularities of coherent light, have been observed in various three-dimensional optical settings. However, incoherent links and knots—knotted or connected lines of coherence singularities—arise from a fundamentally different concept. They are “hidden” in the statistic properties of a randomly fluctuating field, making their presence often elusive or undetectable. Here, we theoretically construct and experimentally demonstrate such topological entities of incoherent light. By leveraging a state-of-the-art incoherent modal-decomposition scheme, we unveil incoherent topological structures from fluctuating light speckles, including Hopf links and Trefoil knots of coherence singularities that are robust against coherence and intensity fluctuations. Our work is applicable to diverse wave systems where incoherence or practical coherence is prevalent, and may pave the way for design and implementation of statistically-shaped topological structures for various applications such as high-dimensional optical information encoding and optical communications.5|3|0Updated：2025-07-11
- Abstract：Light-field imaging has wide applications in various domains, including microscale life science imaging, mesoscale neuroimaging, and macroscale fluid dynamics imaging. The development of deep learning-based reconstruction methods has greatly facilitated high-resolution light-field image processing, however, current deep learning-based light-field reconstruction methods have predominantly concentrated on the microscale. Considering the multiscale imaging capacity of light-field technique, a network that can work over variant scales of light-field image reconstruction will significantly benefit the development of volumetric imaging. Unfortunately, to our knowledge, no one has reported a universal high-resolution light-field image reconstruction algorithm that is compatible with microscale, mesoscale, and macroscale. To fill this gap, we present a real-time and universal network (RTU-Net) to reconstruct high-resolution light-field images at any scale. RTU-Net, as the first network that works over multiscale light-field image reconstruction, employs an adaptive loss function based on generative adversarial theory and consequently exhibits strong generalization capability. We comprehensively assessed the performance of RTU-Net through the reconstruction of multiscale light-field images, including microscale tubulin and mitochondrion dataset, mesoscale synthetic mouse neuro dataset, and macroscale light-field particle imaging velocimetry dataset. The results indicated that RTU-Net has achieved real-time and high-resolution light-field image reconstruction for volume sizes ranging from 300 μm × 300 μm × 12 μm to 25 mm × 25 mm × 25 mm, and demonstrated higher resolution when compared with recently reported light-field reconstruction networks. The high-resolution, strong robustness, high efficiency, and especially the general applicability of RTU-Net will significantly deepen our insight into high-resolution and volumetric imaging.4|3|0Updated：2025-07-11
- Abstract：Low-noise microwave oscillators are cornerstones for wireless communication, radar and clocks. The employment and optimization of optical frequency combs have enabled photonic microwave synthesizers with unrivalled noise performance and bandwidth breaking the bottleneck of those electronic counterparts. Emerging interest is to use chip-based Kerr frequency combs, namely microcombs. Today microcombs built on photonic integrated circuits feature small size, weight and power consumption, and can be manufactured to oscillate at any frequency ranging from microwave to millimeter-wave band. A monolithic microcomb-based microwave oscillator requires integration of lasers, photodetectors and nonlinear microresonators on a common substrate, which however has still remained elusive. Here, we demonstrate the first, fully hybrid-integrated, microcomb-based microwave oscillator at 10.7 GHz. The chip device, powered by a customized microelectronic circuit, leverages hybrid integration of a high-power DFB laser, a silicon nitride microresonator of a quality factor exceeding 25 × 106, and a high-speed photodetector chip of 110 GHz bandwidth (3 dB) and 0.3 A/W responsivity. Each component represents the state of the art of its own class, yet also allows large-volume manufacturing with low cost using established CMOS and Ⅲ-Ⅴ foundries. The hybrid chip outputs an ultralow-noise laser of 6.9 Hz intrinsic linewidth, a coherent microcomb of 10.7 GHz repetition rate, and a 10.7 GHz microwave carrier of 6.3 mHz linewidth – all the three functions in one entity occupying a footprint of only 76 mm2. Furthermore, harnessing the nonlinear laser-microresonator interaction, we observe and maneuver a unique noise-quenching dynamics within discrete microcomb states, which offers immunity to laser current noise, suppression of microwave phase noise by more than 20 dB, and improvement of microwave power by up to 10 dB. The ultimate microwave phase noise reaches −75/−105/−130 dBc/Hz at 1/10/100 kHz Fourier offset frequency. Our results can reinvigorate our information society for communication, sensing, imaging, timing and precision measurement.4|4|0Updated：2025-07-11
SEE MORE
- Technical support is provided by Beijing Founder electronics co., LTD 京ICP备09064830号-19
京公网安备11010802024621 - It is recommended to read the content of this site in Chrome&IE9+. Please switch to extreme mode in browser 360.
- Cookies We use cookies to help provide and enhance our service and tailor content. By continuing, you agree to the use of cookies.
0