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The authors demonstrate a multicolor optical chip which processes images using light instead of electricity, making computers faster and more energy-efficient. It could power real-time vision in drones, cars, and smart devices with much less battery drain.

Free-space meta-optics with ultrahigh quality(Q)-factor at visible wavelengths is demanded but very challenging to achieve due to the fabrication imperfections. Here, the authors design an etch-free metasurface with minimized fabrication defects and experimentally demonstrate a million-Q resonance at 779 nm wavelength.

Ningzhi Xie and colleagues present an inverse-designed polychromatic metalens that achieves low dispersion across three distinct wavelengths (643 nm, 532 nm, and 444 nm), making it suitable for tri-color scanning fiber endoscopes

Large aperture, diffractive metaoptics for broadband imaging have posed an outstanding challenge for miniaturized optics. In this work, Fröch, Chakravarthula, and colleagues address these challenges and successfully demonstrate a meta-optic with a 1 cm, f/2 aperture for full color imaging.

Photonic alternatives to electrical circuits require low energy demand and fast modulation speed, which has proven difficult for on-chip devices. Using quantum dot photonic crystal nanocavities, Vučkovićet al. demonstrate an electrically-switchable light-emitting diode with such capabilities.

While meta-optics have the potential to dramatically miniaturize camera technology, the quality of the captured images remains poor. Co-designing a single meta-optic and software correction, here the authors report on full-color imaging with quality comparable to commercial cameras.

The authors demonstrate a programmable and mappable silicon photonic coupled cavity array capable of implementing a wide range of tight-binding Hamiltonians. This work is useful for realizing integrated photonic analog quantum simulators.

Extracting a single photon from a light pulse is deceptively complicated to accomplish. Now, a deterministic experimental implementation of photon subtraction could bring a host of opportunities in quantum information technology.

An ultrastrong exciton–polariton coupling in two-dimensional excitonic mithrene with a large refractive index and a large oscillator strength of its primary exciton is reported, enabling the formation of self-hybridized exciton–polaritons with Rabi splitting of >600 meV.

Exploring the miniaturization of imaging systems, researchers use inverse-design for broadband meta-optics in the LWIR spectrum. Here, authors achieve a six-fold Strehl ratio improvement in image quality over conventional metalenses using a novel design and computational techniques.

Both laser stabilization and isolation are demonstrated simultaneously by using Kerr nonlinearity in a high-Q silicon nitride ring resonator to self-injection lock a distributed-feedback laser, bringing on-chip lasers closer to real-world fully integrated applications.

Phase change materials (PCMs) are promising for low-power programmable photonic circuits. Here, authors show electrically controlled wide-bandgap PCM antimony sulfide achieving low loss, high cyclability and up to 32 levels, and post-fabrication trimming is also demonstrated.

A non-volatile silicon photonics switch based on phase-change materials actuated by graphene heaters shows a switching energy density that is within an order of magnitude of the fundamental thermodynamic limit.

A miniature laser is reported that uses two-dimensional tungsten diselenide as the active medium, which is placed on a photonic crystal membrane that acts as the laser cavity; the laser emits visible light, with an ultralow pump threshold.

Metalens with typical chromatic aberrations, when attached to the distal tip of a conventional endoscope, simultaneously encodes different depths into the RGB channels of a camera at the proximal end.

Metasurface optics offer a very favourable size, weight, power and cost metric compared to bulky optical elements based on polished pieces of glass or moulded plastics, and these valuable traits are now propelling their use in many areas of technology.

Large aperture and wide field of view eyepiece optics are composed of two layers of ultra-flat, lightweight meta-optics.

Zhelyeznyakov and coworkers present a data-free physics-informed neural network to model and optimize the electromagnetic field distribution of large-scale ( ~ 1 mm in diameter) optical meta-lenses. This simplified method can speed up the design of large aperture meta-optics.

The design of meta-optics and photonics components poses a number of high-dimensional, fabrication-constrained, computationally expensive optimization problems. Here, the authors propose a framework based on algorithmic differentiation to optimize arbitrary meta-optical devices with any shape or topology, enabling rapid inverse design of photonics and complex meta-optical devices.

Self-hybridized exciton–polaritons are shown to enable sub-bandgap absorption and emission in 2D perovskites. The energy absorbed by the perovskites are also found to transfer to few-layer graphene in a heterostructure.