PHOTONICS RESEARCH FEATURE ISSUE

Structured Light: From Nanophotonics to Quantum

Submissions Open: 01 June 2025

Submission Deadline: 01 August 2025

Structured light refers to the ability to tailor and control light in all its degrees of freedom, to enhance functionality in real-world applications, and to probe deeper into fundamental aspects of light. Recent advances in the field are fueled by emerging technologies such as metasurfaces, PiCs, spatial light modulators and digital micro-mirror devices, and have led to new applications in diverse fields, from communication to imaging, sensing to metrology, and microscopy to machining. This feature issue will highlight research spanning all fields influenced by structured light. We encourage papers that are application based, exploring the use of structured light. We will allow a limited number of submissions that are wave based, for structured waves beyond light, e.g., THz waves, water waves, acoustic waves and matter waves.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• •   General creation, control, propagation and detection of structured light
• •   Structured light lasers
• •   Quantum structured light (to celebrate IYQ)
• •   Light-matter interactions
• •   Structured light in complex channels
• •   Structured light meets structured matter
• •   Metasurfaces, PiCs and arbitrary control of light’s degrees of freedom
• •   Optical neural networks and machine intelligence for creation and detection of structured light
• •   Applications of structured light, including optical communications, imaging, sensing, metrology, etc.
• •   Optical topologies, including singular optics, vortices, skyrmions, hopfions and others
• •   Spatio-temporal light, spatio-temporal topologies, and space-time optics
• •   Multi-dimensional and multi-modal light, including non-separable states of light
• •   Nonlinear optics and high-harmonic conversion of structured light
• •   Structured waves beyond visible light
• •   Structured matter waves, polaritonic vortices, plasmonic skyrmions
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All submissions need to present original, previously unpublished work and will be subject to the normal standards and peer review processes of the journal. The standard Photonics Research Article Processing Charges will apply to all published research articles. Please prepare manuscripts according to the author instructions for submission to Photonics Research and submit through Optica Publishing Group’s electronic submission system, specifying from the drop-down menu that the manuscript is for the feature issue on Structured Light: From Nanophotonics to Quantum.

Feature Issue Guest Editors:

Andrew Forbes, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa (Lead Editor)

Haoran Ren, Monash University, Australia

Lixiang Chen, Xiamen University, China

Yijie Shen, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Takashige Omatsu, Chiba University, Japan