Nature PhotonicsPub Date : 2026-09-30DOI: 10.1038/s41566-026-02018-7
David Pile
{"title":"Strong coupling of photon to an electron on helium","authors":"David Pile","doi":"10.1038/s41566-026-02018-7","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41566-026-02018-7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":18926,"journal":{"name":"Nature Photonics","volume":"20 10","pages":"1130-1130"},"PeriodicalIF":38.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149078895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature PhotonicsPub Date : 2026-09-30DOI: 10.1038/s41566-026-02005-y
Xiao-Dong He
{"title":"Hybrid nanophotonic trap boosts atomic storage and coherence times","authors":"Xiao-Dong He","doi":"10.1038/s41566-026-02005-y","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41566-026-02005-y","url":null,"abstract":"A hybrid nanophotonic trap that replaces the attractive red-detuned laser field with atom–surface interactions — Casimir–Polder interactions and electrostatic attraction — achieves record-long storage and coherence times for cold atoms coupled to a nanofibre surface.","PeriodicalId":18926,"journal":{"name":"Nature Photonics","volume":"20 10","pages":"1121-1122"},"PeriodicalIF":38.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149078916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature PhotonicsPub Date : 2026-09-30DOI: 10.1038/s41566-026-02017-8
Jacopo Fregoni
{"title":"SHINE lights up the extremes","authors":"Jacopo Fregoni","doi":"10.1038/s41566-026-02017-8","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41566-026-02017-8","url":null,"abstract":"The Shanghai High Repetition Rate XFEL and Extreme Light Facility is approaching its first lasing. Nature Photonics spoke with Zhentang Zhao, director of the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility and the SHINE project, about the facility’s capabilities and future plans.","PeriodicalId":18926,"journal":{"name":"Nature Photonics","volume":"20 10","pages":"1117-1118"},"PeriodicalIF":38.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149078921","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature PhotonicsPub Date : 2026-09-30DOI: 10.1038/s41566-026-02006-x
Thomas Godin
{"title":"Time-stretch spectroscopy breaks temporal aliasing barrier","authors":"Thomas Godin","doi":"10.1038/s41566-026-02006-x","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41566-026-02006-x","url":null,"abstract":"A temporally super-resolved single-shot method overcomes the long-standing temporal–spectral trade-off in time-stretch spectroscopy. The outcome is continuous measurements of non-repetitive spectral dynamics with picosecond resolution, providing a three-orders-of-magnitude improvement over the current state of the art.","PeriodicalId":18926,"journal":{"name":"Nature Photonics","volume":"20 10","pages":"1119-1120"},"PeriodicalIF":38.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149078922","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature PhotonicsPub Date : 2026-09-30DOI: 10.1038/s41566-026-01994-0
Jiamin Wu, Qionghai Dai
{"title":"One super sensor from many","authors":"Jiamin Wu, Qionghai Dai","doi":"10.1038/s41566-026-01994-0","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41566-026-01994-0","url":null,"abstract":"By combining 48 parallel sensors with diffractive multiplexing to recover information from the gaps between the sensors, a new wide-field microscope achieves a spatial resolution of approximately 3 micrometres over more than 5.2 square centimetres at 120 frames per second, substantially relaxing the conventional trade-off between field of view, resolution and imaging speed.","PeriodicalId":18926,"journal":{"name":"Nature Photonics","volume":"20 10","pages":"1123-1124"},"PeriodicalIF":38.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149078917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature PhotonicsPub Date : 2026-09-30DOI: 10.1038/s41566-026-02011-0
Bartosz Pruchnik
{"title":"Optomechanics for piconewton force metrology","authors":"Bartosz Pruchnik","doi":"10.1038/s41566-026-02011-0","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41566-026-02011-0","url":null,"abstract":"Of the sensors that can directly sense forces in the pico- and sub-pico-newton ranges, only a few can measure in liquids. Microfibre-based microcantilevers now add to this family, providing a versatile, broad-bandwidth, high-sensitivity optomechanical sensor.","PeriodicalId":18926,"journal":{"name":"Nature Photonics","volume":"20 10","pages":"1125-1126"},"PeriodicalIF":38.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149078920","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Microchip Nd:YAG laser with master-oscillator–power-amplifier architecture","authors":"Yu Guo, Yubo Wang, Haoqi Zhao, Fengyan Yang, Guangcanlan Yang, Hao Xie, Hong X. Tang","doi":"10.1038/s41566-026-01984-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-026-01984-2","url":null,"abstract":"Diode-pumped solid-state lasers play a central role in modern photonics owing to their exceptional efficiency and ability to extend spectral coverage beyond the reach of semiconductor diodes. These attributes have enabled breakthroughs in precision metrology, quantum optics and coherent communications. However, bringing the proven advantages of diode-pumped solid-state gain media such as neodymium-doped yttrium aluminium garnet (Nd:YAG) onto an integrated photonic platform has remained difficult, largely due to inefficient pump utilization and limited power scaling in chip-scale implementations. Here we demonstrate a photonic-integrated Nd:YAG laser–amplifier system that overcomes these challenges with a microchip-based master-oscillator–power-amplifier architecture. The seed laser, employing a double-resonant microring resonator, could reach a threshold as low as 2.9 μW. The single-pass waveguide amplifier, when optimized separately, provides up to 46.6 dB small-signal gain. Combining the low-threshold seed with cascaded waveguide amplifiers, the integrated microchip-based master-oscillator–power-amplifier delivers more than 12 dBm of amplified continuous-wave output power. These results establish Nd:YAG waveguide integration as a practical route to compact and high-performance solid-state light sources.","PeriodicalId":18926,"journal":{"name":"Nature Photonics","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":35.0,"publicationDate":"2026-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149087872","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature PhotonicsPub Date : 2026-09-30DOI: 10.1038/s41566-026-02021-y
Daniel Davidovich, Boyang Ma, Adi Goldner, Shimon Cohen, Zhaopin Chen, Andrei G. Borisov, Michael Krüger
{"title":"Attosecond current control and timing in a scanning tunnelling microscope","authors":"Daniel Davidovich, Boyang Ma, Adi Goldner, Shimon Cohen, Zhaopin Chen, Andrei G. Borisov, Michael Krüger","doi":"10.1038/s41566-026-02021-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-026-02021-y","url":null,"abstract":"Quantum tunnelling of electrons can be confined to the sub-cycle timescale of strong light fields, contributing decisively to the extreme time resolution of attosecond science. Because tunnelling also enables atomic-scale spatial resolution in scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM), integrating STM with light pulses has long been a key objective in ultrafast microscopy, spanning the picosecond and femtosecond domains, with first signatures of attosecond dynamics. However, while sub-cycle dynamics on the attosecond timescale are routinely controlled and determined with high precision, controlling the direction of attosecond currents and determining their duration have remained elusive in STM. Here we induce STM tunnelling currents using two-colour laser pulses and dynamically control their direction, relying solely on the sub-cycle waveform of the pulses. Projecting our measurement data onto one-electron and many-body theory descriptions reveals a three-step transport process in the non-adiabatic tunnelling regime as the physical mechanism, with a theory-derived current burst duration of 860 as. Despite working under ambient conditions but free of thermal artefacts, we achieve sub-angström topographic sensitivity and a lateral spatial resolution of 2 nm. This unprecedented capability to directionally control attosecond bursts will enable the triggering and imaging of ultrafast charge dynamics at the spatiotemporal microscopy frontier of lightwave electronics.","PeriodicalId":18926,"journal":{"name":"Nature Photonics","volume":"166 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":35.0,"publicationDate":"2026-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149087870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Trans-interface engineering for reliable perovskite solar cells with reproducible stability","authors":"Pengfei Guo, Wenjian Yu, Mingwei Hao, Kuan Wang, Tianwei Duan, Shaoying Li, Yuanyuan Zhou","doi":"10.1038/s41566-026-02007-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-026-02007-w","url":null,"abstract":"High reproducibility in interface-dominated device stability is crucial for the industrialization of perovskite solar cells. Conventional interface engineering uses planar interlayers to passivate and interlock the perovskite and the charge-transport layer, which often involves a trade-off between efficient charge transport and high stability. In this work, we use trans-interface engineering to create vertically aligned, mechanically tough nanolinks that penetrate both the perovskite and the charge-transport layer, simultaneously enhancing interface reliability and charge transfer. Here, as a proof of concept, we pre-incorporated triple and single organic linkers into the perovskite and the charge-transport layer, respectively, and then applied azobisisobutyronitrile-derived cyanoisopropyl radicals to trigger polymerization of the two linkers within their respective layers and to vertically bond them at the heterointerfacial contacts. A perovskite/charge-transport-layer interface enhanced by trans-interface engineering shows superior mechanical reliability compared with other reported interfacial approaches. The resultant perovskite solar cells deliver improved power conversion efficiencies of up to 27.04% (certified at 26.67%). Under maximum-power-point tracking at one-sun-intensity illumination, 92% of the tested perovskite solar cells reached T80 lifetimes of 1,400 h, demonstrating improved stability and reproducibility. This high reliability stems largely from the trans-interface engineering-induced suppression of mechanical failure in device operation. This work points to a new direction for improving perovskite solar cells using trans-interfacial materials, which is also applicable to other multilayered optoelectronic devices beyond photovoltaics.","PeriodicalId":18926,"journal":{"name":"Nature Photonics","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":35.0,"publicationDate":"2026-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149087871","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Giant phonon-assisted upconversion photoluminescence of in situ photo-carbonized polymer dots for 3D high-definition optical disks","authors":"Hui Zhang, Simone Lamon, Haoyi Yu, Weizhao Gu, Haibo Ding, Liying Liu, Qiming Zhang, Min Gu","doi":"10.1038/s41566-026-02004-z","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41566-026-02004-z","url":null,"abstract":"Recent advancements in high-capacity storage technologies, especially solid-state drives, have made progress by employing multilevel encoding schemes that increase data density. In contrast, optical data storage systems face difficulties in achieving similar multilevel recording due to the limited dynamic range of photo-responsive materials and inherent signal-to-noise challenges. These material-level constraints limit optical encoding fidelity, preventing traditional optical platforms from achieving the rapid capacity growth seen in electronic storage. Here, to address these challenges, we present an approach utilizing giant anti-Stokes phonon-assisted upconversion photoluminescence via in situ laser writing and reading of upconversion carbonized polymer dots. This method enables high-capacity three-dimensional optical data storage with exceptional efficiency. Unlike conventional Stokes photoluminescence media, our approach maximizes near-infrared light utilization, achieving high resolution with ultralow noise. Our experimental demonstration showcases three-dimensional multilayer encoding with 1,024 distinct greyscale levels, reaching an estimated storage capacity of approximately 400 Tb on a DVD-sized disk while maintaining >99.99% reliability. Additionally, our methodology introduces a scalable pathway for extending greyscale encoding beyond 10,000 levels through optimized phonon–photon coupling, surpassing current petabit-scale optical storage capabilities and potentially laying the foundation for next-generation archival storage solutions with unprecedented density and fidelity. Researchers demonstrate high-capacity 3D optical data storage with high efficiency enabled by anti-Stokes phonon-assisted upconversion photoluminescence via in situ laser writing and reading of upconversion carbonized polymer dots.","PeriodicalId":18926,"journal":{"name":"Nature Photonics","volume":"20 10","pages":"1214-1223"},"PeriodicalIF":38.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149078897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}