Metal inorganic-organic complex (MIOC) crystals are a new category of hybrid glass formers. However, the glass-forming compositions of MIOC crystals are limited due to lack of both a general design principle for such compositions and a deep understanding of the structure and formation mechanism for MIOC glasses. This work reports a general approach for synthesizing glass-forming MIOC crystals. In detail, the principle of this approach is based on the creation of hydrogen-bonded structural network by substituting acid anions for imidazole or benzimidazole ligands in the tetrahedral units of zeolitic imidazolate framework crystals. By tuning the metal centers, anions, and organic ligands of MIOCs, supramolecular unit structures can be designed to construct supramolecular networks and thereby enable property modulation. Furthermore, mixed-ligand synthesis yielded a mixed-crystal system in which the glass-transition temperature (Tg) can be linearly tuned from 282 K to 360 K through gradual substitution of benzimidazole for imidazole. Interestingly, upon vitrification, MIOCs were observed to undergo reorganization of hydrogen-bonded networks, with retention of tetrahedral units, short-range disorder, and the freezing of multiple conformations. This work offers a new strategy to systematically expand the glass-forming compositional range of MIOCs and to develop functional MIOC glasses.

Low-phase-noise and pure-spectrum Raman light is vital for high-precision atom interferometry by two-photon Raman transition. A preferred and prevalent solution for Raman light generation is electro-optic phase modulation. However, phase modulation inherently brings in double sidebands, resulting in residual sideband effects of multiple laser pairs beside Raman light in atom interferometry. Based on a well-designed rectangular fiber Bragg grating and an electro-optic modulator, optical single-sideband modulation has been realized at 1560 nm with a stable suppression ratio better than -25 dB despite of intense temperature variations. After optical filtration and frequency doubling, a robust phase-coherent Raman light at 780 nm is generated with a stable SNR of better than -19 dB and facilitates measuring the local gravity successfully. This proposed all-fiber single-sideband-modulated Raman light source, characterized as robust, compact and low-priced, is practical and potential for field applications of portable atom interferometry.

Corrosion mechanism of minerals and glass is a critical study domain in geology and materials science, vital for comprehending material durability under various environmental conditions. Despite decades of extensive study, a core aspect of these mechanisms - specifically, the formation of amorphous alteration layers upon exposure to aqueous environments - remains controversial. In this study, the corrosion behavior of a boro-alumino-phospho-silicate glass (BAPS) was investigated using advanced solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (SSNMR) and SEM techniques. The results reveal a uniform nanoscale phase separation into Al-P-rich and Al-Si-rich domains. During corrosion, the Al-P-rich domain undergoes gelation, whereas the Al-Si-rich domain remains vitreous, forming a gel layer comprised of both phases. Although SEM images show a sharp gel/glass interface - suggestive of a dissolution-precipitation mechanism - the phase coexistence within the gel layer provides definitive evidence against such a mechanism. Instead, we propose an in situ transformation mechanism governed by chemical reactions, involving: (i) preferential hydrolysis of Al-P-rich domain leading to porous gel regions; (ii) retention of Al-Si glass domains within the gel layer, with water infiltrating inter-network spaces; and (iii) selective leaching of phosphorus over aluminum, leading to reorganization of the gel network.

High resolution imaging is achieved using increasingly larger apertures and successively shorter wavelengths. Optical aperture synthesis is an important high-resolution imaging technology used in astronomy. Conventional long baseline amplitude interferometry is susceptible to uncontrollable phase fluctuations, and the technical difficulty increases rapidly as the wavelength decreases. The intensity interferometry inspired by HBT experiment is essentially insensitive to phase fluctuations, but suffers from a narrow spectral bandwidth which results in a lack of detection sensitivity. In this study, we propose optical synthetic aperture imaging based on spatial intensity interferometry. This not only realizes diffraction-limited optical aperture synthesis in a single shot, but also enables imaging with a wide spectral bandwidth. And this method is insensitive to the optical path difference between the sub-apertures. Simulations and experiments present optical aperture synthesis diffraction-limited imaging through spatial intensity interferometry in a 100 $nm$ spectral width of visible light, whose maximum optical path difference between the sub-apertures reach $69.36\lambda$. This technique is expected to provide a solution for optical aperture synthesis over kilometer-long baselines at optical wavelengths.

Ghost imaging (GI) achieves 2D image reconstruction through high-order correlation of 1D bucket signals and 2D light field information, particularly demonstrating enhanced detection sensitivity and high-quality image reconstruction via efficient photon collection in scattering media. Recent investigations have established that deep learning (DL) can substantially enhance the ghost imaging reconstruction quality. Furthermore, with the emergence of large models like SDXL, GPT-4, etc., the constraints of conventional DL in parameters and architecture have been transcended, enabling models to comprehensively explore relationships among all distinct positions within feature sequences. This paradigm shift has significantly advanced the capability of DL in restoring severely degraded and low-resolution imagery, making it particularly advantageous for noise-robust image reconstruction in GI applications. In this paper, we propose the first large imaging model with 1.4 billion parameters that incorporates the physical principles of GI (GILM). The proposed GILM implements a skip connection mechanism to mitigate gradient explosion challenges inherent in deep architectures, ensuring sufficient parametric capacity to capture intricate correlations among object single-pixel measurements. Moreover, GILM leverages multi-head attention mechanism to learn spatial dependencies across pixel points during image reconstruction, facilitating the extraction of comprehensive object information for subsequent reconstruction. We validated the effectiveness of GILM through a series of experiments, including simulated object imaging, imaging objects in free space, and imaging object located 52 meters away in underwater environment. The experimental results show that GILM effectively analyzes the fluctuation trends of the collected signals, thereby optimizing the recovery of the object's image from the acquired data.

Neutral atom platform has become an attractive choice to study the science of quantum information and quantum simulation, where intense efforts have been devoted to the entangling processes between individual atoms. For the development of this area, two-qubit controlled-PHASE gate via Rydberg blockade is one of the most essential elements. Recent theoretical studies have suggested the advantages of introducing non-trivial waveform modulation into the gate protocol, which is anticipated to improve its performance towards the next stage. We report our recent experimental results in realizing a two-qubit controlled-PHASE($C_Z$) gate via off-resonant modulated driving(ORMD) embedded in two-photon transition for Rb atoms. It relies upon a single modulated driving pulse with a carefully calculated smooth waveform to gain the appropriate phase accumulations required by the two-qubit gate. Combining this $C_Z$ gate with global microwave pulses, two-atom entanglement is generated with the raw fidelity of 0.945(6). Accounting for state preparation and measurement (SPAM) errors, we extract the entanglement operation fidelity to be 0.980(7). Our work features completing the $C_Z$ gate operation within a single pulse to avoid shelved Rydberg population, thus demonstrate another promising route for realizing high-fidelity two-qubit gate for neutral atom platform.

Writing optical waveguides with femtosecond laser pulses provides the capability of forming three-dimensional photonic circuits for manipulating light fields in both linear and nonlinear manners. To fully explore this potential, large depths of the buried waveguides in transparent substrates are often desirable to facilitate achieving vertical integration of waveguides in a multi-layer configuration, which, however, is hampered by rapidly degraded axial resolution caused by optical aberration. Here, we show that with the correction of the spherical aberration, polarization-independent waveguides can be inscribed in a nonlinear optical crystal lithium niobate (LN) at depths up to 1.4 mm, which is more than one order of magnitude deeper than the waveguides written with aberration uncorrected femtosecond laser pulses. Our technique is beneficial for applications ranging from miniaturized nonlinear light sources to quantum information processing.

We report on a high-power mid-infrared femtosecond master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) system, employing Cr:ZnS and Cr:ZnSe polycrystals with fine-tuned doping profiles. Based on the soft-aperture Kerr-lens mode-locking in the soliton regime, the seed oscillator generates ~40-fs pulses with a repetition rate ~173 MHz with an average power close to 400 mW. The amplification process of the seed pulse train is investigated in depth in a single-pass configuration for both Cr:ZnS and Cr:ZnSe crystal rods. For further power scaling, a dual-stage MOPA system has been implemented, generating pulse trains with an average power up to 10.4 W, limited only by the pump source, with a re-compressed pulse duration of 78 fs using a dispersion compensator comprising chirped mirrors and sapphire plates. This work paves the way for further power scaling of mid-infrared Cr:ZnS/ZnSe ultrafast laser systems without moving parts for applications in material processing, remote sensing and medicine.

This work demonstrates photon emission gain, i.e., emission of multiple photons per injected electron, through impact excitation in Er-doped silicon light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Conventional methods for exciting Er ions in silicon suffer from low efficiency due to mismatched energy transfer between exciton recombination and Er excitation. Here, we propose a reverse-biased Si PN junction diode where ballistically accelerated electrons induce inelastic collisions with Er ions, enabling tunable excitation via electric field modulation. Theoretical modeling reveals that photon emission gain arises from multiple impact excitations by a single electron traversing the electroluminescence region, with the gain value approximating the ratio of emission region width to electron mean free path, i.e., G = Lex/l. Experimental results show an internal quantum efficiency (IQE) of 1.84% at 78 K, representing a 20-fold enhancement over room-temperature performance. This work provides a critical foundation for on-chip integration of silicon-based communication-band lasers and quantum light sources.

Extreme ultraviolet (XUV) attosecond pulses, generated by a process known as laser-induced electron recollision, are a key ingredient for attosecond metrology, providing a tool to precisely initiate and probe sub-femtosecond dynamics in the microcosms of atoms, molecules and solids[1]. However, with the current technology, extending attosecond metrology to scrutinize the dynamics of the inner-shell electrons is a challenge, that is because of the lower efficiency in generating the required soft x-ray \hbar\omega>300 eV attosecond bursts and the lower absorption cross-sections in this spectral range. A way around this problem is to use the recolliding electron to directly initiate the desired inner-shell process, instead of using the currently low flux x-ray attosecond this http URL an excitation process occurs in a sub-femtosecond timescale, and may provide the necessary "pump" step in a pump-probe experiment[2]. Here we used a few cycle infrared \lambda_{0}~1800nm source[3] and observed direct evidences for inner-shell excitations through the laser-induced electron recollision process. It is the first step toward time-resolved core-hole studies in the keV energy range with sub-femtosecond time resolution.

A plasma mirror is an optical device for high-power, ultrashort-wavelength electromagnetic fields, utilizing a sheet of relativistic oscillating electrons to generate and manipulate light. In this work, we propose that the spatiotemporally varying plasma oscillation, induced by an ultra-high-intensity laser beam, functions as a "spacetime mirror" with significant potential for exploring quantum light. We find that the spacetime mirror exhibits several exotic features: (i) a superluminal spacetime boundary, (ii) time reflection and refraction, and (iii) quantum light sources with pair generation. Our theoretical and simulation results are in excellent agreement, and experimental verification is underway. Our work demonstrates the interplay with emerging fields such as time varying media, suggesting the plasma mirror as an ideal platform to study strong-field quantum optics at extremes.

The production of high-yield, longitudinally polarized positron beams represents an outstanding challenge in advanced accelerator science. Laser-driven schemes offer a compact alternative but typically yield only transverse polarization, or require pre-polarized electron beams, and struggle to efficiently accelerate positrons to high energies. Here, we introduce an all-optical scheme that overcomes these limitations by integrating positron generation, acceleration, and spin manipulation in a unified framework. Through a head-on collision between an ultraintense, circularly polarized laser pulse and a counterpropagating unpolarized electron beam, we drive a robust QED cascade. The nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process within the cascade produces positrons that are born directly within the strong laser field. Crucially, these positrons are instantaneously captured and accelerated to multi-GeV energies (up to $\sim$9 GeV) via a direct laser acceleration mechanism, while their spins are simultaneously rotated to longitudinal alignment by the field dynamics. Our Monte-Carlo simulations confirm the simultaneous achievement of a high positron yield ($\sim$20 $e^+/e^-$), a high average longitudinal polarization ($\sim$50\%), and GeV-scale energies. This all-optical source, feasible at upcoming ultraintense laser facilities, presents a compact and efficient solution for applications in collider physics and fundamental high-energy experiments.

Neutral atom array serves as an ideal platform to study the quantum logic gates, where intense efforts have been devoted to improve the two-qubit gate fidelity. We report our recent findings in constructing a different type of two-qubit controlled-PHASE quantum gate protocol with neutral atoms enabled by Rydberg blockade, which aims at both robustness and high-fidelity. It relies upon modulated driving pulse with specially tailored smooth waveform to gain appropriate phase accumulations for quantum gates. The major features include finishing gate operation within a single pulse, not necessarily requiring individual site addressing, not sensitive to the exact value of blockade shift while suppressing population leakage error and rotation error. We anticipate its fidelity to be reasonably high under realistic considerations for errors such as atomic motion, laser power fluctuation, power imbalance, spontaneous emission and so on. Moreover, we hope that such type of protocol may inspire future improvements in quantum gate designs for other categories of qubit platforms and new applications in other areas of quantum optimal control.

Metal inorganic-organic complex (MIOC) glasses have emerged as a new family of melt-quenched glasses. However, the vitrification of MIOC is challenging since most of the crystalline MIOC precursors decompose before melting. The decomposition problem severely narrows the compositional range of MIOC glass formation. Here, we report a novel approach for preparing the MIOC glasses that combines slow-solvent-removal with subsequent quenching to avoid gel thermal decomposition and crystallization. Specifically, the new approach utilizes an aprotic solvent (acetone) to kinetically prevent the ordering of the metal-ligand complex molecules in solution, thereby suppressing crystallization and forming a gel. The subsequent gradual drying process leads to the removal of the solvent to enhance the connections between molecules through hydrogen bonds, thus causing the formation of a hydrogen-bonded network. The increased network connectivity lowers the mobility of the molecules, thereby avoiding gel crystallization. Consequently, a disordered network is frozen-in during quenching of the dried gel from 130 °C to room temperature, and finally MIOC glass forms. Structural analyses reveal that hydrogen bonds are responsible for connecting the tetrahedral units. The as-prepared MIOC glass exhibits some fascinating behaviors, e.g., Tg increasing with rapid room-temperature relaxation, CO2 uptake, and red-shift of photoluminescence. This work not only presents a novel strategy for fabricating large-sized, stable, functional MIOC glasses, but also uncovers the critical role of hydrogen bonds in MIOC glass formation.

Optical propagation time in matter could reveal fruitful information, such as the velocity of light and the sample's refractive index. In this paper, we build a simple and robust setup for measuring the optical propagation time in matter for a known distance, the system uses high frequency square signal as the signal carrier, and a lock-in amplifier is employed to obtain the phase difference between the reference square signal and the other one penetrating the sample, in this way the optical time of flight in matter can be obtained by a background subtraction process. Primary experimental result confirms the feasibility of the newly proposed measuring theory, which can be used to measure easily in high-speed the speed of light and the refractive index of optical transparent material, compared with the currently popular measuring technique using oscilloscope, potential advantage of our proposed method employing lock-in amplifier is that high accuracy are promising, and in contrast with the presently most popular method for measuring the sample's refractive index based on the minimum deviation angle, superiority of our suggested method is the easy preparation of the sample, the convenient operability and the fast measuring speed.

We consider application of a temporal imaging system, based on the sum-frequency generation, to a nonclassical, in particular, squeezed optical temporal waveform. We analyze the restrictions on the pump and the phase matching condition in the summing crystal, necessary for preserving the quantum features of the initial waveform. We show that modification of the notion of the field of view in the quantum case is necessary, and that the quantum field of view is much narrower than the classical one for the same temporal imaging system. These results are important for temporal stretching and compressing of squeezed fields, used in quantum-enhanced metrology and quantum communications.

Spatiotemporal optical vortex (STOV) with transverse orbital angular momentum (TOAM) can induce some novel properties in high energy density physics. However, the current STOV pulse energy is limited to the mJ level, which greatly hinders the development of the research field of relativistic laser-matter interaction. Combined with the large-scale grating pair in high-peak-power laser facility, the method for generating of STOV with ultra-high intensity up to 1021 W/cm2 is proposed. The numerical simulation proves that the wave packet with 60 fs duration and 83 J energy can be generated in the far field, maintaining an integral spatiotemporal vortex construction. Finally, STOVs with 1.1 mJ single pulse energy were obtained in a proof-of-principle experiment, and characterized by a home-made measuring device.

While field-driven electron emission is theoretically understood down to the subcycle regime, its direct experimental temporal characterization using long-wavelength terahertz (THz) fields remains elusive. Here, by driving a graphite tip with phase-stable quasi-single-cycle THz pulses, we reveal distinct subcycle electron emission dynamics including: (1) At a carrier-envelope phase (CEP) near zero, spectral peaks scale linearly with THz field strength, characteristic of subcycle emission; (2) At the opposite CEP, dominant deceleration fields generate stationary low-energy peaks. Crucially, we develop a pump-probe-free, direct reconstruction method extracting electron pulse profiles solely from measured energy spectra, obtaining durations from 97.3 to 114.3 fs as the field increases (191-290 kV/cm). Phase-resolved simulations further reveal a 71.2% modulation in the cutoff energy and a near-total (99.7%) suppression of the emission current. This work not only validates the Fowler-Nordheim model under THz excitation but also establishes a general framework for the direct temporal characterization of subcycle electron emission, opening pathways for precise electron control in ultrafast electron sources and lightwave nanoelectronics.

We present a straightforward method to extend the noise-tracking bandwidth for self-correction algorithms in free-running dual-comb interferometry, leveraging coherent-harmonic-enhanced dual-comb spectroscopy. As a proof of concept, we employed both this novel architecture and a conventional one to perform free-running dual-comb spectroscopy of a $\text{H}^{13}\text{C}^{14}\text{N}$ gas cell, demonstrating a 20-fold increase in tracking bandwidth at the same spectral resolution of 12.5 MHz. Since this approach improves the tracking bandwidth by generating harmonic centerbursts within an interferogram period, it decouples the tracking bandwidth from the repetition rate difference, thus avoiding spectral acquisition bandwidth narrowing. This significantly broadens the outlook for free-running dual-comb spectroscopy.