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The ultrafast reversibility of changes to the electronic structure and electric polarizability of a dielectric with the electric field of a laser pulse, demonstrated here, offers the potential for petahertz-bandwidth optical signal manipulation. Dielectrics turned conductor in a flash Two studies published in this issue highlight the potential for ultrafast signal manipulation in dielectrics using optical fields. When it comes to electrical signal processing, semiconductors have become the materials of choice. However, insulators such as dielectrics could be attractive alternatives: they have a fast response in principle, but usually have extremely low conductivity at low electric fields and break down in large fields. The electronic properties of dielectrics can be controlled with few-cycle laser pulses that permit damage-free exposure of dielectrics to high electric fields. Agustin Schiffrin et al . demonstrate that strong optical laser fields with controlled few-cycle waveforms can reversibly transform a dielectric insulator into a conductor within the optical period (within one femtosecond). Martin Schultze et al . address the crucial issue of ultrafast reversibility, demonstrating that the dielectric can be repeatedly switched 'on' and 'off' with light fields, without degradation. The control of the electric and optical properties of semiconductors with microwave fields forms the basis of modern electronics, information processing and optical communications. The extension of such control to optical frequencies calls for wideband materials such as dielectrics, which require strong electric fields to alter their physical properties 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 . Few-cycle laser pulses permit damage-free exposure of dielectrics to electric fields of several volts per ångström 6 and significant modifications in their electronic system 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 . Fields of such strength and temporal confinement can turn a dielectric from an insulating state to a conducting state within the optical period 14 . However, to extend electric signal control and processing to light frequencies depends on the feasibility of reversing these effects approximately as fast as they can be induced. Here we study the underlying electron processes with sub-femtosecond solid-state spectroscopy, which reveals the feasibility of manipulating the electronic structure and electric polarizability of a dielectric reversibly with the electric field of light. We irradiate a dielectric (fused silica) with a waveform-controlled near-infrared few-cycle light field of several volts per angström and probe changes in extreme-ultraviolet absorptivity and near-infrared reflectivity on a timescale of approximately a hundred attoseconds to a few femtoseconds. The field-induced changes follow, in a highly nonlinear fashion, the turn-on and turn-off behaviour of the driving field, in agreement with the predictions of a quantum mechanical model. The ultrafast reversibility of the effects implies that the physical properties of a dielectric can be controlled with the electric field of light, offering the potential for petahertz-bandwidth signal manipulation.

Nano- and micromechanical solid-state quantum devices have become a focus of attention. Reliably generating nonclassical states of their motion is of interest both for addressing fundamental questions about macroscopic quantum phenomena and for developing quantum technologies in the domains of sensing and transduction. We used quantum optical control techniques to conditionally generate single-phonon Fock states of a nanomechanical resonator. We performed a Hanbury Brown and Twiss–type experiment that verified the nonclassical nature of the phonon state without requiring full state reconstruction. Our result establishes purely optical quantum control of a mechanical oscillator at the single-phonon level.

A van der Waals heterostructure built from atomically thin semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) enables the formation of excitons from electrons and holes in distinct layers, producing interlayer excitons with large binding energy and a long lifetime. By employing heterostructures of monolayer TMDs, we realize optical and electrical generation of long-lived neutral and charged interlayer excitons. We demonstrate that neutral interlayer excitons can propagate across the entire sample and that their propagation can be controlled by excitation power and gate electrodes. We also use devices with ohmic contacts to facilitate the drift motion of charged interlayer excitons. The electrical generation and control of excitons provide a route for achieving quantum manipulation of bosonic composite particles with complete electrical tunability.

Spin defects in silicon carbide have the advantage of exceptional electron spin coherence combined with a near-infrared spin-photon interface, all in a material amenable to modern semiconductor fabrication. Leveraging these advantages, we integrated highly coherent single neutral divacancy spins in commercially available p-i-n structures and fabricated diodes to modulate the local electrical environment of the defects. These devices enable deterministic charge-state control and broad Stark-shift tuning exceeding 850 gigahertz. We show that charge depletion results in a narrowing of the optical linewidths by more than 50-fold, approaching the lifetime limit. These results demonstrate a method for mitigating the ubiquitous problem of spectral diffusion in solid-state emitters by engineering the electrical environment while using classical semiconductor devices to control scalable, spin-based quantum systems.

Ultrashort pulse generation hinges on the careful management of dispersion. Traditionally, this has exclusively involved second-order dispersion, with higher-order dispersion treated as a nuisance to be minimized. Here, we show that this higher-order dispersion can be strategically leveraged to access an uncharted regime of ultrafast laser operation. In particular, our mode-locked laser—with an intracavity spectral pulse shaper—emits pure-quartic soliton pulses that arise from the interaction of fourth-order dispersion and the Kerr nonlinearity. Phase-resolved measurements demonstrate that their pulse energy scales with the third power of the inverse pulse duration. This implies a strong increase in the energy of short pure-quartic solitons compared with conventional solitons, for which the energy scales as the inverse of the pulse duration. These results not only demonstrate a novel approach to ultrafast lasers, but more fundamentally, they clarify the use of higher-order dispersion for optical pulse control, enabling innovations in nonlinear optics and its applications.By suppressing the second- and third-order intracavity dispersion using an intracavity spectral pulse shaper, a mode-locked laser that emits pure-quartic soliton pulses that arise from the interaction of the fourth-order dispersion and the Kerr nonlinearity is demonstrated.

Feedforward control based on an accurate dynamic model is an effective approach to reduce the dynamic effect of the robot and improve its performance. However, due to the complicated work environment with considerable uncertainty, it is difficult to obtain a high-precision dynamic model of the robot, which severely deteriorates the achievable control performance. This paper proposes an iterative learning method to accurately design the industrial feedforward controller and compensate for the external uncertain dynamic load of the robot. Based on a standard dynamic model, a complete linear feedforward controller is presented. An iterative design strategy is given to iteratively update the feedforward controller by combining the Moore-Penrose Inverse and the PID learning rate. Experiments are carried out on a 5-DOF industrial hybrid robot to validate the effectiveness of the proposed iterative learning method. The experiment results illustrate that the industrial feedforward controller can rapidly converge to the optimal controller and significantly improve the servo performance by using the proposed method. This paper provides an effective method for applying iterative learning control to an unopened industrial control system. It is very useful for the practical control of hybrid robots in industrial field.

Control and manipulation of single charges and their internal degrees of freedom, such as spin, may enable applications in quantum information technology, spintronics and quantum sensing1,2. Recently, atomically thin semiconductors with a direct bandgap such as group VI-B transition-metal dichalcogenide monolayers have emerged as a platform for valleytronics—the study of the valley degree of freedom of charge carriers to store and control information. They offer optical, magnetic and electrical control of the valley index, which, with the spin, is locked into a robust spin-valley index3,4. However, because recombination lifetimes of photogenerated excitations in transition-metal dichalcogenides are of the order of a few picoseconds, optically generated valley excitons possess similar lifetimes. On the other hand, the valley polarization of free holes has a lifetime of microseconds5–9. Whereas progress has been made in optical control of the valley index in ensembles of charge carriers10–12, valley control of individual charges, which is crucial for valleytronics, remains unexplored. Here we provide unambiguous evidence for localized holes with a net spin in optically active WSe2 quantum dots13–17 and we initialize their spin-valley state with the helicity of the excitation laser under small magnetic fields. Under such conditions, we estimate a lower bound of the valley lifetime of a single charge in a quantum dot from the recombination time to be of the order of nanoseconds. Remarkably, neutral quantum dots do not exhibit such spin-valley initialization, which illustrates the role of the excess charge in prolonging the valley lifetime. Our work extends the field of two-dimensional valleytronics to the level of single spin- valleys, with implications for quantum information and sensing applications.While neutral-charge quantum dots in optically active WSe2 do not show spin-valley initialization, localized holes possess a net spin and their spin-valley state can be selected with the helicity of the laser excitation.

The ability to directly monitor the states of electrons in modern field-effect devices—for example, imaging local changes in the electrical potential, Fermi level and band structure as a gate voltage is applied—could transform our understanding of the physics and function of a device. Here we show that micrometre-scale, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy 1 – 3 (microARPES) applied to two-dimensional van der Waals heterostructures 4 affords this ability. In two-terminal graphene devices, we observe a shift of the Fermi level across the Dirac point, with no detectable change in the dispersion, as a gate voltage is applied. In two-dimensional semiconductor devices, we see the conduction-band edge appear as electrons accumulate, thereby firmly establishing the energy and momentum of the edge. In the case of monolayer tungsten diselenide, we observe that the bandgap is renormalized downwards by several hundreds of millielectronvolts—approaching the exciton energy—as the electrostatic doping increases. Both optical spectroscopy and microARPES can be carried out on a single device, allowing definitive studies of the relationship between gate-controlled electronic and optical properties. The technique provides a powerful way to study not only fundamental semiconductor physics, but also intriguing phenomena such as topological transitions 5 and many-body spectral reconstructions under electrical control. Changes in the electronic states of two-dimensional semiconductor devices resulting from electrical gating can be monitored directly using micrometre-scale angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy.

Spin-based logic architectures provide nonvolatile data retention, near-zero leakage, and scalability, extending the technology roadmap beyond complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor logic 1 – 13 . Architectures based on magnetic domain walls take advantage of the fast motion, high density, non-volatility and flexible design of domain walls to process and store information 1 , 3 , 14 – 16 . Such schemes, however, rely on domain-wall manipulation and clocking using an external magnetic field, which limits their implementation in dense, large-scale chips. Here we demonstrate a method for performing all-electric logic operations and cascading using domain-wall racetracks. We exploit the chiral coupling between neighbouring magnetic domains induced by the interfacial Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction 17 – 20 , which promotes non-collinear spin alignment, to realize a domain-wall inverter, the essential basic building block in all implementations of Boolean logic. We then fabricate reconfigurable NAND and NOR logic gates, and perform operations with current-induced domain-wall motion. Finally, we cascade several NAND gates to build XOR and full adder gates, demonstrating electrical control of magnetic data and device interconnection in logic circuits. Our work provides a viable platform for scalable all-electric magnetic logic, paving the way for memory-in-logic applications. Chiral coupling between neighbouring magnetic domains is used in domain-wall racetracks to realize various all-electric logic operations by cascading the gates.