Confining electromagnetic fields inside an optical cavity can enhance the light–matter coupling between quantum materials embedded inside the cavity and the confined photon fields. When the interaction between the matter and the photon fields is strong enough, even the quantum vacuum field fluctuations of the photons confined in the cavity can alter the properties of the cavity-embedded solid-state

High-precision optical time and frequency transfer is accomplished by a collection of laser-based techniques that achieve time dissemination with subpicosecond instabilities and frequency dissemination with instabilities below one part in 1016. The ability to distribute and compare time and frequency at these precisions enables current optical timing networks such as interconnected optical atomic clocks

Topological textures are well-established topics in condensed matter systems and nonlinear field theories. A typical example is the magnetic spin texture, which promises high-density data storage and information processing applications. With the recent development of nanophotonics and structured light, the topological optical textures, which are analogous to magnetic spin textures, can be created in

Photovoltaics, a mature technology, is set to play a vital role in achieving a carbon-free energy system. This article examines the pivotal role of optics in advancing photovoltaics. We identify key scientific research areas where the optics community can make significant contributions. We are guided by the central question: How can optics facilitate the large-scale deployment of photovoltaics necessary

Structured light has gained prominence of late, offering a modern toolkit for controlling all of light’s degrees of freedom and facilitating many applications. A highly topical application is the long distance free-space delivery of structured light, essential in classical and quantum communication, remote sensing, and energy transport. Unfortunately atmospheric turbulence tends to distort the structure

Plasmonics offers a groundbreaking avenue for manipulating light beyond the diffraction limit, finding utility in diverse applications ranging from optical cloaking and chemical sensing to super-resolution imaging. Despite these promising applications, plasmonic devices are always born with significant energy dissipation, posing substantial challenges to their efficiency and practical implementation

Optical metasurfaces are conventionally viewed as organized flat arrays of photonic or plasmonic nanoresonators, also called metaatoms. These metasurfaces are typically highly ordered and fabricated with precision using expensive tools. However, the inherent imperfections in large-scale nanophotonic devices, along with recent advances in bottom-up nanofabrication techniques and design strategies, have

Since the discovery of two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers as direct bandgap semiconductors with pronounced room-temperature exciton transitions, research on excitons and polaritons in these materials has exploded worldwide. Here, we give an introductory tutorial on the basic properties of excitons and polaritons in these materials, emphasizing how they are different from those

Halide perovskites have emerged as a new class of materials for photoelectric conversion, attracting an ever-increasing level of attention within the scientific community. These materials are characterized by expansive compositional choices, ease of synthesis, an impressively high light absorption coefficient, and extended carrier recombination lifetimes. These attributes make halide perovskites an

This tutorial offers a comprehensive overview of photonic time crystals: artificial materials whose electromagnetic properties are periodically modulated in time at scales comparable to the oscillation period of light while remaining spatially uniform. Being the temporal analogs to traditional photonic crystals, photonic time crystals differ in that they exhibit momentum bandgaps instead of energy

Recent decades have seen significant advancements in integrated photonics, driven by improvements in nanofabrication technology. This field has been developed from integrated semiconductor lasers and low-loss waveguides to optical modulators, enabling the creation of sophisticated optical systems on a chip-scale capable of performing complex functions such as optical sensing, signal processing, and

Non-Hermitian band structures have gained considerable attention due to the novel phenomena not present in their Hermitian counterparts and their connection to various branches of mathematics such as topology and complex analysis. The study of such band structures may also find applications in laser design and in sensing. The spectra and eigenmode characteristics of extended non-Hermitian systems depend

The editors of Advances in Optics and Photonics and Optica introduce a collaborative publishing effort that highlights emerging fields in ways that will benefit both new and seasoned researchers. In this first example, a tutorial and a mini-review cover the physics of second-order nonlinear interactions in dispersion-engineered nonlinear photonic devices.

Spatiotemporal sculpturing of light pulses with sophisticated structures on demand is one major goal of the everlasting pursuit of ultrafast information transmission and processing as well as ultraintense energy concentration and extraction using light. It may hold the key to unlocking new extraordinary fundamental physical effects. Traditionally, spatiotemporal light pulses are treated as spatiotemporally

Entanglement is a quintessential quantum mechanical phenomenon with no classical equivalent. First discussed by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen and formally introduced by Schrödinger in 1935, entanglement has grown from a scientific debate to a radically new resource that sparks a technological revolution. This review focuses on fundamentals and recent advances in entanglement-based quantum information

Emerging applications in quantum information, microscopy, biosensing, depth sensing, and augmented reality demand miniaturized components in the visible (VIS) and near-infrared (NIR) spectrum with wavelengths between 380 and 1100 nm. Foundry silicon photonics, which has been optimized for telecommunication wavelengths, can be adapted to this wavelength range. In this article, we review recent developments

Since the invention of the silicon subwavelength grating waveguide in 2006, subwavelength metamaterial engineering has become an essential design tool in silicon photonics. Employing well-established nanometer-scale semiconductor manufacturing techniques to create metamaterials in optical waveguides has allowed unprecedented control of the flow of light in photonic chips. This is achieved through fine-tuning

Since the invention of the silicon subwavelength grating waveguide in 2006, subwavelength metamaterial engineering has become an essential design tool in silicon photonics. Employing well-established nanometer-scale semiconductor manufacturing techniques to create metamaterials in optical waveguides has allowed unprecedented control of the flow of light in photonic chips. This is achieved through fine-tuning

Realization of single-mode, high-power and high-beam-quality (namely, high-brightness) semiconductor lasers, which can rival or even replace bulky lasers such as gas, solid, and fiber lasers, is one of the ultimate goals of laser physics and photonics. The demand for such ultimate single-mode high-brightness semiconductor lasers is increasing for a wide variety of emerging applications including next-generation

Non-Abelian optics has emerged as a promising research field with the potential to revolutionize our understanding of light–matter interactions and enable new applications in areas including topological photonic devices, quantum computing, optical sensing, and communications. This review provides an overall framework for the rapidly developing field of non-Abelian properties in optics, including the

Harnessing linear and angular momenta of light is one of the cornerstones in modern optics and has found tremendous applications in optical circuits, particle manipulation, metrology, quantum information processing, etc. Emerging theoretical protocols and experimental explorations have created a surge of interest in light lateral momenta and forces, which are perpendicular to the light wave propagation

This tutorial–review on applications of artificial neural networks in photonics targets a broad audience, ranging from optical research and engineering communities to computer science and applied mathematics. We focus here on the research areas at the interface between these disciplines, attempting to find the right balance between technical details specific to each domain and overall clarity. First

This tutorial–review on applications of artificial neural networks in photonics targets a broad audience, ranging from optical research and engineering communities to computer science and applied mathematics. We focus here on the research areas at the interface between these disciplines, attempting to find the right balance between technical details specific to each domain and overall clarity. First

The generation, manipulation, storage, and detection of single photons play a central role in emerging photonic quantum information technology. Individual photons serve as flying qubits and transmit the relevant quantum information at high speed and with low losses, for example between individual nodes of quantum networks. Due to the laws of quantum mechanics, the associated quantum communication is

Light transport in a highly multimode fiber exhibits complex behavior in space, time, frequency, and polarization, especially in the presence of mode coupling. The newly developed techniques of spatial wavefront shaping turn out to be highly suitable to harness such enormous complexity: a spatial light modulator enables precise characterization of field propagation through a multimode fiber, and by

Non-Hermitian optics is a burgeoning field at the intersection of quantum physics, electrodynamics, and nanophotonics. It provides a new perspective of the role of gain and loss in optical systems. Leveraging the advanced designs inspired by non-Hermitian physics, classical optical platforms have been widely investigated to unveil novel physical concepts, such as parity-time symmetry and exceptional

The coherent Ising machine (CIM) is designed to solve the NP-hard Ising problem quickly and energy efficiently. Boolean satisfiability (SAT) and maximum satisfiability (Max-SAT) are classes of NP-complete and NP-hard problems that are equally important and more practically relevant combinatorial optimization problems. Many approaches exist for solving Boolean SAT, such as quantum annealing and classical

Starting with a historical account of evolution in Raman spectroscopy, in this review we provide details of the advancements that have pushed detection limits to single molecules and enabled non-invasive molecular characterization of distinct organelles to provide next-generation bioanalytical assays and ultrasensitive molecular and cellular diagnostics. Amidst a growing number of publications in recent

The commercial success of radio-frequency acoustic filters in wireless communication systems has launched aluminum nitride (AlN) as one of the most widely used semiconductors across the globe. Over recent years, AlN has also been investigated as an attractive photonic integrated platform due to its excellent characteristics, such as enormous bandgaps (∼6.2 eV), quadratic and cubic optical nonlinearities

This tutorial provides an overview of the local description of polarization for nonparaxial light, for which all Cartesian components of the electric field are significant. The polarization of light at each point is characterized by a three-component complex vector in the case of full polarization and by a 3 × 3 polarization matrix for partial polarization. Standard concepts for paraxial polarization

Optical microcombs represent a new paradigm for generating laser frequency combs based on compact chip-scale devices, which have underpinned many modern technological advances for both fundamental science and industrial applications. Along with the surge in activity related to optical microcombs in the past decade, their applications have also experienced rapid progress: not only in traditional fields

Optical microcombs represent a new paradigm for generating laser frequency combs based on compact chip-scale devices, which have underpinned many modern technological advances for both fundamental science and industrial applications. Along with the surge in activity related to optical microcombs in the past decade, their applications have also experienced rapid progress: not only in traditional fields

Over the past few years, progress in hollow-core optical fiber technology has reduced the attenuation of these fibers to levels comparable to those of all-solid silica-core single-mode fibers. The sustained pace of progress in the field has sparked renewed interest in the technology and created the expectation that it will one day enable realization of the most transparent light-propagating waveguides

Dielectric laser accelerators (DLAs) are fundamentally based on the interaction of photons with free electrons, where energy and momentum conservation are satisfied by mediation of a nanostructure. In this scheme, the photonic nanostructure induces near-fields which transfer energy from the photon to the electron, similar to the inverse-Smith–Purcell effect described in metallic gratings. This, in

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have the potential to revolutionize the interface between our physical and digital worlds. Recent advances in digital processing, data transmission, optics, and display technologies offer new opportunities for ubiquitous AR/VR applications. The foundation of this revolution is based on AR/VR display systems with high image fidelity, compact formfactor

The advent of chirped-pulse amplification in the 1980s and femtosecond Ti:sapphire lasers in the 1990s enabled transformative advances in intense laser–matter interaction physics. Whereas most of experiments have been conducted in the limited near-infrared range of 0.8–1 μm, theories predict that many physical phenomena such as high harmonic generation in gases favor long laser wavelengths in terms

Owing to advances in fabrication technology and device design, semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) are evolving as a promising candidate for future optical coherent communication links. This review article focuses on the fundamentals and broad applications of SOAs, specifically for optical channels with advanced modulation formats, as an integrable broadband amplifier in commercial transponders

Space-time wave packets (STWPs) constitute a broad class of pulsed optical fields that are rigidly transported in linear media without diffraction or dispersion, and are therefore propagation-invariant in the absence of optical nonlinearities or waveguiding structures. Such wave packets exhibit unique characteristics, such as controllable group velocities in free space and exotic refractive phenomena

Realizing efficient on-chip light sources has long been the “holy-grail” for Si-photonics research. Several important breakthroughs were made in this field in the past few years. In this article, we review the most recent advances in light sources integrated onto mainstream Si platforms and discuss four different integration technologies: Group IV light sources on Si, heterogeneous integration of III–V

Integrated optical devices will play a central role in the future development of nonlinear quantum photonics. Here we consider the generation of nonclassical states of light within them with a focus on Gaussian states beyond the low-gain, single photon pair regime accurately described by perturbation theory. Starting from the solid foundation provided by Maxwell’s equations, we then move to applications

Deep learning has been revolutionizing information processing in many fields of science and engineering owing to the massively growing amounts of data and the advances in deep neural network architectures. As these neural networks are expanding their capabilities toward achieving state-of-the-art solutions for demanding statistical inference tasks in various applications, there appears to be a global

During the past few years, the optics and photonics communities have renewed their attention toward transparent conducting oxides (TCOs), which for over two decades have been broadly employed for the fabrication of transparent electrodes in photovoltaic and communication technologies. This reinvigorated research curiosity is twofold: on the one hand, TCOs, with their metal-like properties, low optical

Understanding the phenomenon of rogue wave formation, often called extreme waves, in diverse branches of nonlinear science has become one of the most attractive domains. Given the great richness of the new results and the increasing number of disciplines involved, we are focusing here on two pioneering fields: hydrodynamics and nonlinear optics. This tutorial aims to provide basic background and the

The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of mode-division and spatial-division optical fiber sensors, mainly encompassing interferometers and advanced fiber gratings. Compared with their single-mode counterparts, which have a very mature field with many highly successful commercial applications, multimodal configurations have developed more recently with advances in fiber device fabrication

The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of mode-division and spatial-division optical fiber sensors, mainly encompassing interferometers and advanced fiber gratings. Compared with their single-mode counterparts, which have a very mature field with many highly successful commercial applications, multimodal configurations have developed more recently with advances in fiber device fabrication

Polarization, the path traced by light’s electric field vector, appears in all areas of optics. In recent decades, various technologies have enabled the precise control of light’s polarization state, even on a subwavelength scale, at optical frequencies. In this review, we provide a thorough, high-level review of the fundamentals of polarization optics and detail how the Jones calculus, alongside Fourier

Light has played a crucial role in the age of information technology and has facilitated the soaring development of information optics. The ever-increasing demand for high-capacity optical devices has prompted the use of physically orthogonal dimensions of light for optical multiplexing. Recent advances in nanotechnology, mainly stemming from functionalized nanomaterials and powerful nanofabrication

This publisher’s note contains a correction to Adv. Opt. Photon. 13, 643 (2021) [CrossRef] .

We present a correction to Eq. (42) in Adv. Opt. Photon. 12, 612 (2020) [CrossRef] .

Photonic integration has seen tremendous progress over the previous decade, and several integration platforms have reached industrial maturity. This evolution has prepared the ground for miniaturized photonic sensors that lend themselves to efficient analysis of gaseous and liquid media, exploiting large interactions lengths of guided light with surrounding analytes, possibly mediated by chemically

We discuss recent developments in measurement protocols that generate quantum entanglement between two remote qubits, focusing on the theory of joint continuous detection of their spontaneous emission. We consider a device geometry similar to that used in well-known Bell state measurements, which we analyze using a conceptually transparent model of stochastic quantum trajectories; we use this to review

Nanophotonics is an important branch of modern optics dealing with light–matter interaction at the nanoscale. Nanoparticles can exhibit enhanced light absorption under illumination by light, and they become nanoscale sources of heat that can be precisely controlled and manipulated. For metal nanoparticles, such effects have been studied in the framework of thermoplasmonics, which, similar to plasmonics

Fano resonance is a universal phenomenon observed in many areas where wave propagation and interference are possible. Fano resonance arises from the interference of broad and narrow spectra of radiation and becomes an important tool for many applications in the physical, chemical, and biological sciences. At the beginning of this paper, we consider Fano resonances in individual particles, primarily

We present an erratum to correct the x, z labels in Figs. 6 and 7 from Adv. Opt. Photon. 10, 484 (2018) [CrossRef] .

In this paper, we review spatial light interference microscopy (SLIM), a common-path, phase-shifting interferometer, built onto a phase-contrast microscope, with white-light illumination. As one of the most sensitive quantitative phase imaging (QPI) methods, SLIM allows for speckle-free phase reconstruction with sub-nanometer path-length stability. We first review image formation in QPI, scattering

We present a general theory of optical coherence tomography (OCT), which synthesizes the fundamental concepts and implementations of OCT under a common 3D $k$-space framework. At the heart of this analysis is the Fourier diffraction theorem, which relates the coherent interaction between a sample and plane wave to the Ewald sphere in the 3D $k$-space representation of the sample. While only the axial

Lithium niobate (LN), an outstanding and versatile material, has influenced our daily life for decades—from enabling high-speed optical communications that form the backbone of the Internet to realizing radio-frequency filtering used in our cell phones. This half-century-old material is currently embracing a revolution in thin-film LN integrated photonics. The successes of manufacturing wafer-scale

Topological photonics is a new and rapidly growing field that deals with topological phases and topological insulators for light. Recently, the scope of these systems was expanded dramatically by incorporating non-spatial degrees of freedom. These synthetic dimensions can range from a discrete ladder of cavity modes or Bloch modes of an array of waveguides to a time-bin division (discrete time steps)

Automated human gesture recognition is receiving significant research interest, with applications ranging from novel acquisition techniques to algorithms, data processing, and classification methodologies. This tutorial presents an overview of the fundamental components and basics of the current 3D optical image acquisition technologies for gesture recognition, including the most promising algorithms

Quantum cryptography is arguably the fastest growing area in quantum information science. Novel theoretical protocols are designed on a regular basis, security proofs are constantly improving, and experiments are gradually moving from proof-of-principle lab demonstrations to in-field implementations and technological prototypes. In this review, we provide both a general introduction and a state of