An international team from Ecole Polytechnique, the College de France, and Germany's Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf has built the world's first all-optical photonic time crystal, a gold-and-semiconductor metamaterial that can be modulated on picosecond timescales. The device cuts terahertz photon losses by more than half, an advance researchers say could open the door to new kinds of ultrafast lasers and telecommunications systems.

Science · Aug 1 · L1-L4