Optical spectroscopy articles from across Nature Portfolio

A nonlinear optical response to a new form of light, dubbed chiral topological light owing to its local chirality and global topological characteristics, is enabling unprecedented enantiosensitivity and robustness of chiro-optical spectroscopies as a result of structured light–matter interactions at deep subwavelength scales.

A broadband hyperspectral image sensor fabricated using photolithography maintains high throughput with high spatial–temporal–spectral resolution, and has demonstrated wide applications including chlorophyll and sugar quantification, blood oxygen and water quality monitoring, textile classification, apple bruise detection, and remote lunar detection.

Hydrogen bonding is a central concept in (bio)chemistry and has been intensively studied in the prototypical complex H₂O-H₂O. In this joint experimental/theoretical study, the authors find hydrogen bonding in H₂S-H₂S to be distinctly different.

A nonlinear optical response to a new form of light, dubbed chiral topological light owing to its local chirality and global topological characteristics, is enabling unprecedented enantiosensitivity and robustness of chiro-optical spectroscopies as a result of structured light–matter interactions at deep subwavelength scales.

A simple cavity-based technology capable of simultaneously measuring optical rotary dispersion and circular dichroism within milliseconds offers ultra-high sensitivity and unprecedented spectral resolution.

The nonlinear optical response of achiral molecules spread on chiral nanostructured substrates and subjected to circularly polarized light is examined. The experiment is a step towards confirming a long-standing theoretical prediction: hyper-Raman optical activity.

Terahertz waveforms can now be measured with atomic-scale spatial resolution as a result of a new form of terahertz time-domain spectroscopy that uses tunnelling electrons as an ultrafast, localized probe. The approach paves the way for ultrafast optical surface analysis at the scale of individual molecules or atoms.

We have discovered an effect, termed stacking-induced intermolecular charge transfer-enhanced Raman scattering (SICTERS), that enhances the Raman signal intensities of small molecules by relying on their self-stacking rather than external substrates. This effect enables the design of substrate-free small-molecule probes for high-resolution, non-invasive transdermal Raman imaging of lymphatic drainage and microvessels.