Free-space optical communication (FSO) can achieve fast, secure, and license-free communication without physical cables, providing a cost-effective, energy-efficient, and flexible solution when fiber connection is unavailable. To achieve FSO on demand, portable FSO devices are essential for flexible and fast deployment, where the key is achieving compact structure and plug-and-play operation. Here, we develop a miniaturized FSO system and realize 9.16 Gbps FSO in a 1 km link, using commercial single-mode-fiber-coupled optical transceiver modules without optical amplification. Fully automatic four-stage acquisition, pointing, and tracking systems are developed, which control the tracking error within 3 μrad, resulting in an average link loss of 13.7 dB. It is the key for removing optical amplification; hence FSO is achieved with direct use of commercial transceiver modules in a bidirectional way. Each FSO device is within an overall size of 45 cm × 40 cm × 35 cm, and 9.5 kg weight, with power consumption of ∼10 W. The optical link up to 4 km is tested with average loss of 18 dB, limited by the foggy test environment. With better weather conditions and optical amplification, longer FSO can be expected. Such a portable and automatic FSO system will produce massive applications of field-deployable high-speed wireless communication in the future.

The collective response of macroscopic quantum states under perturbation is widely used to study quantum correlations and cooperative properties, such as defect-induced quantum vortices in Bose–Einstein condensates and the non-destructive scattering of impurities in superfluids. Superfluorescence (SF), as a collective effect rooted in dipole–dipole cooperation through virtual photon exchange, leads to the macroscopic dipole moment (MDM) in high-density dipole ensembles. However, the perturbation response of the MDM in SF systems remains unknown. Echo-like behavior is observed in a cooperative exciton ensemble under a controllable perturbation, corresponding to an initial collapse followed by a revival of the MDM. Such a dynamic response could refer to a phase transition between the macroscopic coherence regime and the incoherent classical state on a time scale of 10 ps. The echo-like behavior is absent above 100 K due to the instability of MDM in a strongly dephased exciton ensemble. Experimentally, the MDM response to perturbations is shown to be controlled by the amplitude and injection time of the perturbations.

A material described as lutetium–hydrogen–nitrogen (Lu-H-N in short) was recently claimed to have “near-ambient superconductivity” [Dasenbrock-Gammon et al., Nature 615, 244–250 (2023)]. If this result could be reproduced by other teams, it would be a major scientific breakthrough. Here, we report our results of transport and structure measurements on a material prepared using the same method as reported by Dasenbrock-Gammon et al. Our x-ray diffraction measurements indicate that the obtained sample contains three substances: the face-centered-cubic (FCC)-1 phase (Fm-3m) with lattice parameter a = 5.03 Å, the FCC-2 phase (Fm-3m) with a lattice parameter a = 4.755 Å, and Lu metal. The two FCC phases are identical to the those reported in the so-called near-ambient superconductor. However, we find from our resistance measurements in the temperature range from 300 K down to 4 K and the pressure range 0.9–3.4 GPa and our magnetic susceptibility measurements in the pressure range 0.8–3.3 GPa and the temperature range down to 100 K that the samples show no evidence of superconductivity. We also use a laser heating technique to heat a sample to 1800 °C and find no superconductivity in the produced dark blue material below 6.5 GPa. In addition, both samples remain dark blue in color in the pressure range investigated.

It is shown that when relativistically intense ultrashort laser pulses are reflected from the boundary of a plasma with a near-critical density, the Doppler frequency shift leads to generation of intense radiation in both the high-frequency (up to the x-ray) and low-frequency (mid-infrared) ranges. The efficiency of energy conversion into the wavelength range above 3 µm can reach several percent, which makes it possible to obtain relativistically intense pulses in the mid-infrared range. These pulses are synchronized with high harmonics in the ultraviolet and x-ray ranges, which opens up opportunities for high-precision pump–probe measurements, in particular, laser-induced electron diffraction and transient absorption spectroscopy.

Structured light fields embody strong spatial variations of polarization, phase, and amplitude. Understanding, characterization, and exploitation of such fields can be achieved through their topological properties. Three-dimensional (3D) topological solitons, such as hopfions, are 3D localized continuous field configurations with nontrivial particle-like structures that exhibit a host of important topologically protected properties. Here, we propose and demonstrate photonic counterparts of hopfions with exact characteristics of Hopf fibration, Hopf index, and Hopf mapping from real-space vector beams to homotopic hyperspheres representing polarization states. We experimentally generate photonic hopfions with on-demand high-order Hopf indices and independently controlled topological textures, including Néel-, Bloch-, and antiskyrmionic types. We also demonstrate a robust free-space transport of photonic hopfions, thus showing the potential of hopfions for developing optical topological informatics and communications.

Hyperbolic shear polaritons (HShPs) emerge with widespread attention as a class of polariton modes with broken symmetry due to shear lattices. We find a mechanism of generating quasi-HShPs(q-HShPs). When utilizing vortex waves as excitation sources of hyperbolic materials without off-diagonal elements, q-HShPs will appear. In addition, these asymmetric q-HShPs can be recovered as symmetric modes away from the source, with a critical transition mode between the left-skewed and right-skewed q-HShPs, via tuning the magnitude of the off-diagonal imaginary component and controlling the topological charge of the vortex source. It is worth mentioning that we explore the influence of parity of topological charges on the field distribution and demonstrate these exotic phenomena from numerical and analytical perspectives. Our results will promote opportunities for both q-HShPs and vortex waves, widening the horizon for various hyperbolic materials based on vortex sources and offering a degree of freedom to control various kinds of polaritons.

We propose a new injection scheme that can generate electron beams with simultaneously a few permille energy spread, submillimeter milliradian emittance, and more than a 100 pC charge in laser wakefield accelerators. In this scheme, a relatively loosely focused laser pulse drives the plasma wakefield, and a tightly focused laser pulse with similar intensity triggers an interference ring pattern that creates onion-like multisheaths in the plasma wakefield. Owing to the change in wavefront curvature after the focal position of the tightly focused laser, the innermost sheath of the wakefield expands, which slows down the effective phase velocity of the wakefield and triggers injection of plasma electrons. Both quasicylindrical and fully three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations confirm the generation of beams with the above mentioned properties.

The control of thermal emission is of great importance for emerging applications in energy conversion and thermometric sensing. Usually, thermal emission at ambient temperature is limited to the mid- to far-infrared, according to the linear theory of Planck’s law. We experimentally demonstrate a broadband nonlinear thermal emission in the visible-NIR spectrum within a quadradic nonlinear medium, which emits visible thermal radiation through a pump-driven nonlinear upconversion from its mid-IR components even at room temperature, unlike its linear counterpart which requires ultrahigh temperature. The broadband emission is enabled by the crucial random quasi-phase-matching condition in our nonlinear nanocrystal powders. Moreover, nonlinear thermal emission also permits visible thermometry using traditional optical cameras instead of thermal ones. This scheme paves the way to understand thermal radiation dynamics with nonlinearity in many fields, such as nonlinear heat transfer and nonlinear thermodynamics.

It is experimentally verified that nonreciprocal photonic systems with continuous translation symmetry may have an ill-defined topology. The topological classification of such systems is only feasible when the material response is regularized with a spatial-frequency cutoff. We experimentally demonstrate that adjoining a small air layer to the relevant material interface may effectively imitate an idealized spatial cutoff that suppresses the nonreciprocal response for short wavelengths and regularizes the topology. Furthermore, it is experimentally verified that nonreciprocal systems with an ill-defined topology may be used to abruptly halt the energy flow in a unidirectional waveguide due to the violation of the bulk-edge correspondence. In particular, we report the formation of an energy sink that absorbs the incoming electromagnetic waves with a large field enhancement at the singularity.

Materials that exhibit visible luminescence upon X-ray irradiation show great potential in the medical and industrial fields. Pure organic materials have recently emerged as promising scintillators for X-ray detection and radiography, due to their diversified design, low cost, and facile preparation. However, recent progress in efficient radioluminescence has mainly focused on small molecules, which are inevitably associated with processability and repeatability issues. Here, a concise strategy is proposed to prepare radioluminescent polymers that exhibit multiple emission colors from blue to yellow with high brightness in an amorphous state by the radical copolymerization of negatively charged polyacrylic acid and different positively charged quaternary phosphonium salts. One of the obtained polymers exhibits excellent photostability under a high X-ray irradiation dosage of 27.35 Gy and has a detection limit of 149 nGy s ^{- 1}. This performance is superior to that of conventional anthracene-based scintillators. Furthermore, by simply drop-casting a polymer methanol solution on a quartz plate, a transparent scintillator screen was successfully fabricated for X-ray imaging with a resolution of 8.7 line pairs mm ^{- 1}. The pure organic phosphorescent polymers with a highly efficient radioluminescence were demonstrated for the first time, and the strategy reported herein offers a promising pathway to expand the application range of amorphous organic scintillators.