Novel technical developments have facilitated groundbreaking improvements in nanoscale X-ray microscopy methodologies as evidenced by the important roles that they play in different research fields including energy materials, industrial catalysis, life science, and environmental science. Herein, we review the state-of-the-art nanoscale synchrotron radiation microscopy techniques and their cutting-edge scientific applications. We emphasize the importance of advanced computing methods, including big data mining and machine learning approaches, in analyzing high-dimensional X-ray imaging data. It is our wish that this comprehensive review will encourage further exploration and promotion of nanoscale synchrotron radiation microscopy and its scientific applications.

Quantum computing technology has developed rapidly in recent years and received wide attention. In this article, we review some basic concepts, current status, long-term and near-term challenges of quantum computing, so that readers can more accurately understand some recent progress and avoid misunderstanding. One of the main applications of universal quantum computers is to break RSA cryptographic systems. Without quantum error correction, it is difficult to achieve quantum computing in the scale of code breaking. Therefore, a primary challenge of quantum computing technology is to implement quantum computing protected by the quantum error correction, i.e. fault-tolerant quantum computation. By looking at the existing experimental technologies, we will find that quantum gates with error rates lower than the fault-tolerance threshold have been realised in experiments, but fault-tolerant quantum computation is still far from practical applications. The main difficulty is that quantum fault tolerance requires an enormous number of qubits with low error rates, beyond what can be achieved by state-of-the-art technologies; therefore, further development is needed. Noisy intermediate-scale quantum computation is likely to be realised in the near future, and there are still some theoretical and technical bottlenecks that need to be addressed. While we can see the huge potential value of quantum computing and recent significant progress, it is important to acknowledge the challenges, face the key problems, and overcome difficulties.

Fundamental research areas are usually born out of free exploration of the Nature. However, national needs, especially special needs of wartime, can lead to unexpected emergence of new areas of fundamental research. Ideas and methods in these areas are more likely to generate revolutionary technologies. A standard case is the radar-inspired chirped pulse amplification technique for strong lasers, which was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics. Radar was one of the most important military needs in World War II. On the one hand, the searching for new radar-emitting sources led to a series of innovative fundamental researches, including the emergence of masers and subsequently lasers. Lasers then spawned many new fundamental research areas, such as laser cooling. Lasers and laser-based fiber-optic communication technologies have changed the life style of modern humans. On the other hand, the chirped pulse amplification technique of radar systems was transposed to the field of optics, breaking the technical bottleneck of generating strong lasers. And the emergence of strong lasers has spawned another series of new fundamental research areas, such as inertial confinement fusion. This article will demonstrate the traction of strategic needs on the birth of basic research through the introduction of key technologies from radar to laser and the chirped pulse amplification technique.

Glasses are disordered solids composed of atoms, molecules, polymers or colloids etc. Glasses are ubiquitous in daily life and have broad applications in industry. However, the theoretical understanding of glassy materials, especially the glass transition, remains a highly controversial area in physics. Colloidal particles in liquid suspensions can form various phases such as crystals, liquids, and glasses. Micrometer-sized colloidal particles can be directly observed even inside the three-dimensional bulk phase using optical microscopy and their Brownian motions can be tracked by image analysis. Such dynamics of individual particles in bulk can hardly be measured in atomic or molecular systems. Here we review the studies of glasses using colloidal model systems. We mainly focus on the transition from supercool liquid to glass, and briefly discuss the crossover between glass and other disordered or partially disordered states such as polycrystals, gels, and vapors.

The circular electron positron collider (CEPC) is a future large collider facility proposed by the high energy physics community in China. It will serve as a Higgs boson factory, and produce large quantities of Z and W bosons, so it will be able to perform precise measurements of the Higgs boson properties, weak electromagnetic force physics, flavor physics, and quantum chromodynamics. Through these high-precision tests, the CEPC could explore new fundamental principles underlying the Standard Model particle physics. Dedicated studies on the potential of CEPC and the critical technologies involved have already been performed. In November 2018, the Conceptual Design Report, a preliminary blueprint of CEPC was published; its successful completion means that the project has now entered the phase of engineering design. The physics potential and progress of the R&D of CEPC will be reviewed in this paper.

Due to their high quality factors and small mode volumes, whispering gallery mode (WGM) microcavities can strongly enhance light-matter interactions, making them an excellent platform for various sensing applications. In this paper we review the burgeoning field of microcavity sensing. We first present recent state-of-the-art results, and discuss microcavity sensing platforms and mechanisms. We then review a variety of WGM sensing applications, including the sensing of single nanoparticles, temperatures, magnetic fields, chemical gases, and strain/stress. Furthermore, we provide a brief summary and outlook on microcavity-based sensing devices and their potential applications.

本文讨论了现代光学仪器的复消色差和超复消色差对玻璃的相对部分色散的要求,论述了玻璃的色散公式的应用条件。应用色散公式和玻璃的色散数据,用电子计算机计算了一批无机玻璃的紫外本征吸收和红外吸收频率及其振子力,论证了它们和玻璃成分及结构的关系,测定了若干无机玻璃的紫外吸收曲线和红外吸收光谱,得到的紫外截止波长和红外最高能量的吸收波长与上述计算值相符合。 此外,本文还讨论了玻璃的相对部分色散和玻璃成分的关系,提出了按照玻璃成分计算玻璃相对部分色散的方法,计算了近百种光学玻璃的相对部分色散系数值,给出了计算误差。由于玻璃的相对部分色散系数较难测定,该计算方法可以用来计算和校正光学玻璃的相对部分色散系数。同时,分析了玻璃中各氧化物和氟化物的相对部分色散的变化规律,可用来指导设计新的特殊色散光学玻璃的成分。