Voigt points represent propagation directions in anisotropic crystals along which optical modes degenerate, leading to a single circularly polarized eigenmode. They are a particular class of exceptional points. Here, we report the fabrication and characterization of a dielectric, anisotropic optical microcavity based on nonpolar ZnO that implements a non-Hermitian system and mimicks the behavior of Voigt points in natural crystals. We prove the exceptional-point nature by monitoring the complex-square-root topology of the mode eigenenergies (real and imaginary parts) around the Voigt points. Polarization state analysis shows, that these artificially engineered Voigt points behave as vortex cores for the linear polarization and sustain chiral modes. Our findings apply to any planar microcavity with broken cylindrical symmetry and, thus, pave the way to exploiting exceptional points in widespread optoelectronic devices as VCSELs and RCLEDs.

We report on temperature-dependent (10 K – 250 K) spectral and dynamical properties of free exciton–polariton and bound exciton emission in copper iodide (CuI) bulk single crystals analyzed by means of time-resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy. The characteristic line shape of the polariton emission at low temperatures is interpreted in terms of the “k-linear term effect” on the degenerate Z1,2 excitons in CuI. For free exciton–polaritons, an increase in the decay time with increasing temperature up to 360 ps at 160 K is observed. For bound exciton emission, decay times between 180 ps and 380 ps are observed at low temperatures, revealing the expected EB3/2 dependence of radiative lifetime on the localization energy. Based on the observed rise times of bound excitons at low temperatures, a defect density of shallow acceptors of 1 × 1017 cm−3 was estimated, in agreement with measured room temperature free hole density.

We report on the observation of lasing in cuprous iodide (CuI) microwires. A vapor-phase transport growth procedure was used to synthesize CuI microwires with low defect concentration. The crystal structure of single microwires was determined to be of zincblende-type.

We have developed two novel vapour phase transport methods to grow ZnO nanorod arrays isotopically enriched with 18 O. Firstly, a three-step process used to grow natural and Zn-enriched ZnO nanorods has been further modified, by replacing the atmospheric O 2 with enriched 18 O 2 , in order to grow 18 O-enriched ZnO nanorods using this vapour-solid method on chemical bath deposited buffer layers. In addition, 18 O-enriched ZnO nanorods were successfully grown using isotopically 18 O-enriched ZnO source powders in a vapour-liquidsolid growth method. Scanning electron microscopy studies confirmed the success of both growth methods in terms of nanorod morphology, although in the case of the vapour-liquidsolid samples, the nanorods' c-axes were not vertically aligned due to the use of a non

We present a detailed investigation of X-ray emission from both flat and nanowire zinc oxide targets irradiated by 60 fs 5 × 1016 W/cm2 intensity laser pulses at a 0.8 µm wavelength. It is shown that the fluence of the emitted hard X-ray radiation in the spectral range 150–800 keV is enhanced by at least one order of magnitude for nanowire targets compared to the emission from a flat surface, whereas the characteristic Kα line emission (8.64 keV) is insensitive to the target morphology. Furthermore, we provide evidence for a dramatic increase of the fast electron flux from the front side of the nanostructured targets. We suggest that targets with nanowire morphology may advance development of compact ultrafast X-ray sources with an enhanced flux of hard X-ray emission that could find wide applications in highenergy density (HED) physics.