Understanding how a network of interconnected neurons receives, stores, and processes information in the human brain is one of the outstanding scientific challenges of our time. The ability to reliably detect neuroelectric activities is essential to addressing this challenge. Optical recording using voltage-sensitive fluorescent probes has provided unprecedented flexibility for choosing regions of interest in recording neuronal activities. However, when recording at a high frame rate such as 500 to 1,000 Hz, fluorescence-based voltage sensors often suffer from photobleaching and phototoxicity, which limit the recording duration. Here, we report an approach called electrochromic optical recording (ECORE) that achieves label-free optical recording of spontaneous neuroelectrical activities. ECORE utilizes the electrochromism of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) thin films, whose optical absorption can be modulated by an applied voltage. Being based on optical reflection instead of fluorescence, ECORE offers the flexibility of an optical probe without suffering from photobleaching or phototoxicity. Using ECORE, we optically recorded spontaneous action potentials in cardiomyocytes, cultured hippocampal and dorsal root ganglion neurons, and brain slices. With minimal perturbation to cells, ECORE allows long-term optical recording over multiple days.

Atom interferometers typically use the total populations the interferometer's output ports as the signal, but finer spatial structure can contain useful information. We pattern a matter-wave phase profile onto an atomic sample. An interferometer translates the phase into a measurable pattern in the atomic density that we use perform the first direct precision measurement of the 7 Li tune-out wavelength near 671 nm. Expressed as a detuning from the |2S 1/2 , F =2 →|2P 1/2 , F =2 transition, we find 3329.3(1.4) MHz for the tensor-shifted tune out of the |2S 1/2 , F =2, mF =0 state with σ ± light polarization and 3310.1(4.9) MHz for the tune out of the the scalar polarizability. This technique may be generalized for directly sensing spatially varying phase profiles.

We report simultaneous conjugate Ramsey-Bordé interferometers with a sample of low-mass (lithium-7) atoms at 50 times the recoil temperature. We optically pump the atoms to a magnetically insensitive state using the 2S 1/2 − 2P 1/2 line. Fast stimulated Raman beam splitters address a broad velocity class and unavoidably drive two conjugate interferometers that overlap spatially. We show that detecting the summed interference signals of both interferometers, using state labeling, allows recoil measurements and suppression of phase noise from vibrations. The use of "warm" atoms allows for simple, efficient, and high-flux atom sources and broadens the applicability of recoil-sensitive interferometry to particles that remain difficult to trap and cool.

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