Catenaa, Thursday, November 20, 2025-Researchers in the United States have amplified long-hidden light states known as dark excitons, advancing prospects for faster quantum communication and compact photonic devices.
Scientists from the City University of New York and the University of Texas at Austin reported that they enhanced these faint light-matter states by building a nanoscale optical cavity that pairs gold nanotubes with a sheet of tungsten diselenide.
The team increased the brightness of dark excitons by about 300,000 times.
They said the method allowed clear observation and precise directional control. Dark excitons normally elude detection because their emission is weak, yet they are seen as promising for quantum systems due to their long lifetimes and resistance to environmental interference.
Researchers engineered the cavity so the excitons retained their natural features. That design countered earlier concerns that plasmonic structures could distort these states.
The work resolved a debate over whether such enhancement could occur without changing the excitons’ identity.
Scientists also showed that the boosted states can be tuned by electric and magnetic fields.
They said this level of control could support future on-chip photonics, sensing devices and quantum networks. The approach relied on thin boron nitride layers to stabilize the structure and reveal previously unseen spin-forbidden dark excitons.
The findings were published in Nature Photonics. The project received backing from several U.S. defense and science agencies, including the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation.
US researchers amplified dark excitons with a nanoscale cavity, enabling control of hidden light states that could power faster quantum and photonic technologies.
