Spatial patterns are a significant characteristic of lasers. The knowledge of spatial patterns of structured laser beams is rapidly expanding, along with the progress of studies on laser physics and technology. Particularly in the last decades, owing to the in-depth attention on structured light with multiple degrees of freedom, the research on spatial and spatiotemporal structures of laser beams has been promptly developed. Such beams have hatched various breakthroughs in many fields, including imaging, microscopy, metrology, communication, optical trapping, and quantum information processing. Here, we would like to provide an overview of the extensive research on several areas relevant to spatial patterns of structured laser beams, from spontaneous organization to multiple transformations. These include the early theory of beam pattern formation based on the Maxwell–Bloch equations, the recent eigenmodes superposition theory based on the time-averaged Helmholtz equations, the beam patterns extension of ultrafast lasers to the spatiotemporal beam structures, and the structural transformations in the nonlinear frequency conversion process of structured beams.

Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are expected to play a significant role in the ongoing second quantum revolution, thanks to their stability and scalability. Still, major upgrades are needed for available PIC platforms to meet the demanding requirements of quantum devices. We present a review of our recent progress in upgrading an unconventional silicon photonics platform toward this goal, including ultralow propagation losses, low-fiber coupling losses, integration of superconducting elements, Faraday rotators, fast and efficient detectors, and phase modulators with low-loss and/or low-energy consumption. We show the relevance of our developments and our vision in the main applications of quantum key distribution, to achieve significantly higher key rates and large-scale deployment; and cryogenic quantum computers, to replace electrical connections to the cryostat with optical fibers.

Vector optical vortices exhibit complex polarization patterns due to the interplay between spin and orbital angular momenta. Here we demonstrate, both analytically and with simulations, that certain polarization features of optical vortex beams maintain constant transverse spatial dimensions independently of beam divergence due to diffraction. These polarization features appear in the vicinity of the phase singularity and are associated with the presence of longitudinal electric fields. The predicted effect may prove important in metrology and high-resolution imaging applications.

A thorough understanding of biological species and emerging nanomaterials requires, among other efforts, their in-depth characterization through optical techniques capable of nanoresolution. Nanoscopy techniques based on tip-enhanced optical effects have gained tremendous interest over the past years, given their potential to obtain optical information with resolutions limited only by the size of a sharp probe interacting with focused light, irrespective of the illumination wavelength. Although their popularity and number of applications is rising, tip-enhanced nanoscopy (TEN) techniques still largely rely on probes that are not specifically developed for such applications, but for atomic force microscopy. This limits their potential in many regards, e.g., in terms of signal-to-noise ratio, attainable image quality, or extent of applications. We take the first steps toward next-generation TEN by demonstrating the fabrication and modeling of specialized TEN probes with known optical properties. The proposed framework is highly flexible and can be easily adjusted to be used with diverse TEN techniques, building on various concepts and phenomena, significantly augmenting their function. Probes with known optical properties could potentially enable faster and more accurate imaging via different routes, such as direct signal enhancement or facile and ultrafast optical signal modulation. We consider that the reported development can pave the way for a vast number of novel TEN imaging protocols and applications, given the many advantages that it offers.

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a dielectric metasurface that allows monitoring of polarization deviations from an arbitrary elliptical input anchor state simply by tracking in real-time the output ratio between the powers of horizontal and vertical components after the metasurface. Importantly, this ratio can be enhanced corresponding to increased responsivity. Such nontrivial functionality is achieved by designing binary metasurfaces that realize tailored nonunitary and chiral polarization transformation. We experimentally demonstrate the operation at telecommunication wavelengths with enhanced responsivity up to 25 for various anchor states, including the strongly elliptical and circular. We also achieve the uncertainty of deviation measurement that is significantly better than the fundamental limit for nonchiral metasurfaces.

The blue phase, which emerges between cholesteric and isotropic phases within a three-dimensional periodical superstructure, is of great significance in display and photonic applications. The crystalline orientation plays an important role in the macroscopic performance of the blue phase, where the single crystal shows higher uniformity over the polydomain and monodomain, resulting in higher Bragg reflection intensity, lower hysteresis, and lower driving voltage. However, currently reported methods of forming a single-crystal blue phase based on thermal controlling or e-beam lithography are quite time-consuming or expensive for large-scale fabrication, especially in the centimeter range, thus hindering the broad practical applications of single-crystal blue-phase-based photonic devices. Herein, a strategy to fabricate a large scale single crystalline blue-phase domain using holography lithography is proposed. Defect-free single-crystal domains both in blue phase I and blue phase II with a desired orientation of over 1 cm² are fabricated based on a nanopatterned grating with periodic homeotropic and degenerate parallel anchoring, with colors from red and green to blue. This holography lithography-assisted strategy for fabrication of a large-scale single-crystal blue phase provides a time-saving and low-cost method for a defect-free single crystalline structure, leading to broad applications in liquid crystal displays, laser devices, adaptive optics elements, and electro-optical devices.

Compact passive silicon photonic devices with high performance are always desired for future large-scale photonic integration. Inverse design provides a promising approach to realize new-generation photonic devices, while it is still very challenging to realize complex photonic devices for most inverse designs reported previously due to the limits of computational resources. Here, we present the realization of several representative advanced passive silicon photonic devices with complex optimization, including a six-channel mode (de)multiplexer, a broadband 90 deg hybrid, and a flat-top wavelength demultiplexer. These devices are designed inversely by optimizing a subwavelength grating (SWG) region and the multimode excitation and the multimode interference are manipulated. Particularly, such SWG structures are more fabrication-friendly than those random nanostructures introduced in previous inverse designs. The realized photonic devices have decent performances in a broad bandwidth with a low excess loss of <1 dB, which is much lower than that of previous inverse-designed devices. The present inverse design strategy shows great effectiveness for designing advanced photonic devices with complex requirements (which is beyond the capability of previous inverse designs) by using affordable computational resources.

Stable operation is one of the most important requirements for a laser source for high-precision applications. Many efforts have been made to improve the stability of lasers by employing various techniques, e.g., electrical and/or optical injection and phase locking. However, these techniques normally involve complex experimental facilities. Therefore, an easy implementation of the stability evaluation of a laser is still challenging, especially for lasers emitting in the terahertz (THz) frequency range because the broadband photodetectors and mature locking techniques are limited. In this work, we propose a simple method, i.e., relative phase locking, to quickly evaluate the stability of THz lasers without a need of a THz local oscillator. The THz laser system consists of a THz quantum cascade laser (QCL) frequency comb and a single-mode QCL. Using the single-mode laser as a fast detector, heterodyne signals resulting from the beating between the single-mode laser and the comb laser are obtained. One of the heterodyne beating signals is selected and sent to a phase-locked loop (PLL) for implementing the relative phase locking. Two kinds of locks are performed by feeding the output error signal of the PLL, either to the comb laser or to the single-mode laser. By analyzing the current change and the corresponding frequency change of the PLL-controlled QCL in each phase-locking condition, we, in principle, are able to experimentally compare the stability of the emission frequency of the single-mode QCL (f_s) and the carrier envelope offset frequency (f_CEO) of the QCL comb. The experimental results reveal that the QCL comb with the repetition frequency injection locked demonstrates much higher stability than the single-mode laser. The work provides a simple heterodyne scheme for understanding the stability of THz lasers, which paves the way for the further locking of the lasers and their high-precision applications in the THz frequency range.

Achieving valley pseudospin with large polarization is crucial in the implementation of quantum information applications. Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDC) with different phase structures provide an ideal platform for valley modulation. The valley splitting has been achieved in hybrid phase WSe₂, while its valley polarization remains unstudied. Magnetic field controllable valley polarization is explored in WSe₂ with coexistence of H and T phases by an all-optical route. A record high valley polarization of 58.3% is acquired with a 19.9% T phase concentration under a 4-T magnetic field and nonresonant excitation. The enhanced valley polarization is dependent on the phase component and shows various increasing slopes, owing to the synergy between the T phase WSe₂ and the magnetic field. The magnetic field controlled local magnetic momentums are revealed as the mechanism for the large valley polarization in H / T-WSe₂. This speculation is also verified by theoretical simulations of the nonequilibrium spin density. These results display a considerable valley magnetic response in phase-engineered TMDC and provide a large-scale scheme for valley polarization applications.

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) is a powerful tool widely used for various scientific and industrial applications due to its ability to provide rich spatiospectral information. However, in exchange for multiplex spectral information, its image acquisition rate is lower than that of conventional imaging, with up to a few colors. In particular, HSI in the infrared region and using nonlinear optical processes is impractically slow because the three-dimensional (3D) data cube must be scanned in a point-by-point manner. In this study, we demonstrate a framework to improve the spectral image acquisition rate of HSI by integrating time-domain HSI and compressed sensing. Specifically, we simulated broadband coherent Raman imaging at a record high frame rate of 25 frames per second (fps) with 100 pixels × 100 pixels, which is 10 × faster than that of previous work, based on an experimentally feasible sampling scheme utilizing 3D Lissajous scanning.

The explosive growth of information urgently requires extending the capacity of optical communication and information processing. Orbital-angular-momentum-based mode division multiplexing (MDM) is recognized as the most promising technique to improve the bandwidth of a single fiber. To make it compatible with the dominant wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), broadband equal high-efficient phase encoding is highly pursued. Here, we propose a twisted-liquid-crystal and rear-mirror-based design for ultrabroadband reflective planar optics. The backtracking of the light inside the twisted birefringent medium leads to an achromatic phase modulation. With this design, a single-twisted reflective q-plate is demonstrated to convert a white beam to a polychromatic optical vortex. Jones calculus and vector beam characterization are carried out to analyze the broadband phase compensation. A dual-twisted configuration further extends the working band to over 600 nm. It supplies an ultrabroadband and reflective solution for the WDM/MDM-compatible elements and may significantly promote advances in ultrabroadband planar optics.

Scattered light imaging through complex turbid media has significant applications in biomedical and optical research. For the past decade, various approaches have been proposed for rapidly reconstructing full-color, depth-extended images by introducing point spread functions (PSFs). However, because most of these methods consider memory effects (MEs), the PSFs have angular shift invariance over certain ranges of angles. This assumption is valid for only thin turbid media and hinders broader applications of these technologies in thick media. Furthermore, the time-variant characteristics of scattering media determine that the PSF acquisition and image reconstruction times must be less than the speckle decorrelation time, which is usually difficult to achieve. We demonstrate that image reconstruction methods can be applied to time-variant thick turbid media. Using the time-variant characteristics, the PSFs in dynamic turbid media within certain time intervals are recorded, and ergodic scattering regimes are achieved and combined as ensemble point spread functions (ePSFs). The ePSF traverses shift-invariant regions in the turbid media and retrieves objects beyond the ME. Furthermore, our theory and experimental results verify that our approach is applicable to thick turbid media with thickness of 1 cm at visible incident wavelengths.

Lipid imaging by conventional photoacoustic microscopy subjects to direct contact sensing with relatively low detection bandwidth and sensitivity, which induces superficial imaging depth and low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in practical imaging scenarios. Herein, we present a photoacoustic remote sensing microscopy for lipid distribution mapping in bio-tissue, featuring noncontact implementation, broad detection bandwidth, deep penetration depth, and high SNR. A tailored high-energy pulsed laser source with a spectrum centered at 1750 nm is used as the excitation beam, while a cofocused 1550 nm continuous-wave beam is used as the probe signal. The pump wavelength is selected to overlap the first overtone of the C-H bond in response to the intensive absorption of lipid molecules, which introduces a much-enhanced SNR (55 dB) onto photoacoustic remote sensing (PARS) signals. Meanwhile, the optical sensing scheme of the photoacoustic signals provides broadband detection compared to the acoustic transducer and refrains the bio-samples from direct contact operations by eliminating the ultrasonic coupling medium. Taking merits of the high detection sensitivity, deep penetration depth, broadband detection, and high resolution of the PARS system, high-quality tissue scale lipid imaging is demonstrated in a model organism and brain slice.

The article provides information about the image on the cover of Advanced Photonics Nexus, Volume 2, Issue 2.