Naomi Halas, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University and winner of the prestigious 2022 Eni Energy Transition Award, discusses her vision for the future of plasmonics and nanophotonics, in terms of fundamentals and applications, in conversation with Jia Zhu, professor in the College of Engineering and Applied Science at Nanjing University and associate editor for Advanced Photonics.

Kerr frequency combs have been attracting significant interest due to their rich physics and broad applications in metrology, microwave photonics, and telecommunications. In this review, we first introduce the fundamental physics, master equations, simulation methods, and dynamic process of Kerr frequency combs. We then analyze the most promising material platform for realizing Kerr frequency combs—silicon nitride on insulator (SNOI) in comparison with other material platforms. Moreover, we discuss the fabrication methods, process optimization as well as tuning and measurement schemes of SNOI-based Kerr frequency combs. Furthermore, we highlight several emerging applications of Kerr frequency combs in metrology, including spectroscopy, ranging, and timing. Finally, we summarize this review and envision the future development of chip-scale Kerr frequency combs from the viewpoint of theory, material platforms, and tuning methods.

The explosion in the amount of information that is being processed is prompting the need for new computing systems beyond existing electronic computers. Photonic computing is emerging as an attractive alternative due to performing calculations at the speed of light, the change for massive parallelism, and also extremely low energy consumption. We review the physical implementation of basic optical calculations, such as differentiation and integration, using metamaterials, and introduce the realization of all-optical artificial neural networks. We start with concise introductions of the mathematical principles behind such optical computation methods and present the advantages, current problems that need to be overcome, and the potential future directions in the field. We expect that our review will be useful for both novice and experienced researchers in the field of all-optical computing platforms using metamaterials.

We propose a physics-informed neural network (PINN) as the forward model for tomographic reconstructions of biological samples. We demonstrate that by training this network with the Helmholtz equation as a physical loss, we can predict the scattered field accurately. It will be shown that a pretrained network can be fine-tuned for different samples and used for solving the scattering problem much faster than other numerical solutions. We evaluate our methodology with numerical and experimental results. Our PINNs can be generalized for any forward and inverse scattering problem.

Direct laser writing (DLW) enables arbitrary three-dimensional nanofabrication. However, the diffraction limit poses a major obstacle for realizing nanometer-scale features. Furthermore, it is challenging to improve the fabrication efficiency using the currently prevalent single-focal-spot systems, which cannot perform high-throughput lithography. To overcome these challenges, a parallel peripheral-photoinhibition lithography system with a sub-40-nm two-dimensional feature size and a sub-20-nm suspended line width was developed in our study, based on two-photon polymerization DLW. The lithography efficiency of the developed system is twice that of conventional systems for both uniform and complex structures. The proposed system facilitates the realization of portable DLW with a higher resolution and throughput.

In the quest to realize a scalable quantum network, semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) offer distinct advantages, including high single-photon efficiency and indistinguishability, high repetition rate (tens of gigahertz with Purcell enhancement), interconnectivity with spin qubits, and a scalable on-chip platform. However, in the past two decades, the visibility of quantum interference between independent QDs rarely went beyond the classical limit of 50%, and the distances were limited from a few meters to kilometers. Here, we report quantum interference between two single photons from independent QDs separated by a 302 km optical fiber. The single photons are generated from resonantly driven single QDs deterministically coupled to microcavities. Quantum frequency conversions are used to eliminate the QD inhomogeneity and shift the emission wavelength to the telecommunication band. The observed interference visibility is 0.67 ± 0.02 (0.93 ± 0.04) without (with) temporal filtering. Feasible improvements can further extend the distance to ∼600 km. Our work represents a key step to long-distance solid-state quantum networks.

We realized off-Γ lasing using the Friedrich–Wintgen bound state in the continuum (FW-BIC) in a one-dimensional suspended high-contrast grating (HCG). A clear anticrossing was observed in the band diagram of the HCG corresponding to the coupling between the specific different orders of Bloch modes, and the FW-BIC with a high quality factor and large confinement factor was observed near the anticrossing point. Owing to these outstanding characteristics, the FW-BIC can serve as a robust and extraordinary cavity mode for realizing low-threshold laser operation and for achieving angle-steering laser beams. The conditions of the FW-BIC can be modulated by tuning the geometry related to the coupling modes in the anticrossing, resulting in a tunable lasing direction observed in the measurement. Furthermore, through appropriate design, the emission angle can be controlled precisely within a wide tunable range. Therefore, FW-BICs can be used to realize high-resolution directional lasing within a wide range of emission angles; they can also be applied in three-dimensional sensing for lidar applications.

The article provides information about the image on the cover of Advanced Photonics, Volume 4, Issue 6.