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As hypothetical topological defects in the geometry of spacetime, vortex strings could have played many roles in cosmology, and their distinct features can provide observable clues about the early universes evolution. A key feature of vortex strings is that they can interact with Weyl fermionic modes and support massless chiral-anomaly states along strings. To date, despite many attempts to detect vortex strings in astrophysics or to emulate them in artificially created systems, observation of these vortex-string chiral modes remains experimentally elusive. Here we report experimental observations of vortex-string chiral modes using a metamaterial system. This is implemented by inhomogeneous perturbation of Yang-monopole phononic metamaterials. The measured linear dispersion and modal profiles confirm the existence of topological modes bound to and propagating along the string with the chiral anomaly. Our work provides a platform for studying diverse cosmic topological defects in astrophysics and offers applications as topological fibres in communication techniques.

Organophosphorus poisoning is a critical condition that can cause central nervous system depression, respiratory failure, and death early on. As its clinical manifestations closely resemble those of carbamate pesticide poisoning, the aim of this case study is to present a case of misdiagnosis, initially identifying carbofuran poisoning as organophosphate in a patient suspect of a heatstroke. We also present a case of intentional self-poisoning with organophosphate dichlorvos to underline the likelihood of pesticide poisoning in patients exhibiting acute cholinergic symptoms when the ingested substance is not known. In such cases, empirical treatment with atropine and oxime can be started pending timely differential diagnosis to adjust treatment as necessary., Trovanje organofosfornim spojevima kritično je stanje koje rano može dovesti do depresije središnjeg živčanog sustava, zatajenja disanja i smrti. Budući da je prema kliničkoj slici blisko srodno trovanju karbamatnim pesticidima, cilj je ovoga članka prikazati slučaj pogrešne dijagnoze, koja je isprva trovanje karbofuranom identificirala kao trovanje organofosfatom u bolesnika u kojega se sumnjalo na toplinski udar. Usporedno dajemo slučaj namjernog samotrovanja organofosfatom diklorvosom da bismo naglasili koliko je velika vjerojatnost trovanja pesticidima u bolesnika s akutnim kolinergičnim simptomima kod kojih se ne zna progutana tvar. U takvim se slučajevima može započeti empirijsko liječenje atropinom i oksimom dok se ne ustanovi pravovremena diferencijalna dijagnoza i po potrebi prilagodi liječenje.

Cross-modal transformers have demonstrated superiority in various vision tasks by effectively integrating different modalities. This paper first critiques prior token exchange methods which replace less informative tokens with inter-modal features, and demonstrate exchange based methods underperform cross-attention mechanisms, while the computational demand of the latter inevitably restricts its use with longer sequences. To surmount the computational challenges, we propose GeminiFusion, a pixel-wise fusion approach that capitalizes on aligned cross-modal representations. GeminiFusion elegantly combines intra-modal and inter-modal attentions, dynamically integrating complementary information across modalities. We employ a layer-adaptive noise to adaptively control their interplay on a per-layer basis, thereby achieving a harmonized fusion process. Notably, GeminiFusion maintains linear complexity with respect to the number of input tokens, ensuring this multimodal framework operates with efficiency comparable to unimodal networks. Comprehensive evaluations across multimodal image-to-image translation, 3D object detection and arbitrary-modal semantic segmentation tasks, including RGB, depth, LiDAR, event data, etc. demonstrate the superior performance of our GeminiFusion against leading-edge techniques. The PyTorch code is available at https://github.com/JiaDingCN/GeminiFusion, Comment: Accepted by ICML 2024, code and models are available at https://github.com/JiaDingCN/GeminiFusion

The DEtection TRansformer (DETR) algorithm has received considerable attention in the research community and is gradually emerging as a mainstream approach for object detection and other perception tasks. However, the current field lacks a unified and comprehensive benchmark specifically tailored for DETR-based models. To address this issue, we develop a unified, highly modular, and lightweight codebase called detrex, which supports a majority of the mainstream DETR-based instance recognition algorithms, covering various fundamental tasks, including object detection, segmentation, and pose estimation. We conduct extensive experiments under detrex and perform a comprehensive benchmark for DETR-based models. Moreover, we enhance the performance of detection transformers through the refinement of training hyper-parameters, providing strong baselines for supported algorithms.We hope that detrex could offer research communities a standardized and unified platform to evaluate and compare different DETR-based models while fostering a deeper understanding and driving advancements in DETR-based instance recognition. Our code is available at https://github.com/IDEA-Research/detrex. The project is currently being actively developed. We encourage the community to use detrex codebase for further development and contributions., Comment: project link: https://github.com/IDEA-Research/detrex

A non-perturbative study on the quantum fluctuations of light ray propagation through a quantum region of spacetime is long overdue. Within the theory of Lorentzian simplicial quantum gravity, we compute the probabilities for a test light ray to land at different locations after travelling through a symmetry-reduced box region in 2,3 and 4 spacetime dimensions. It is found that for fixed boundary conditions, light ray fluctuations are generically large when all coupling constants are relatively small in absolute value. For fixed coupling constants, as the boundary size is decreased light ray fluctuations first increase and then decrease in a 2D theory with the cosmological constant, Einstein-Hilbert and R-squared terms. While in 3D and 4D theories with the cosmological constant and Einstein-Hilbert terms, as the boundary size is decreased light ray fluctuations just increase. Incidentally, when studying 2D quantum gravity we show that the global time-space duality with the cosmological constant and Einstein-Hilbert terms noted previously also holds when arbitrary even powers of the Ricci scalar are added. We close by discussing how light ray fluctuations can be used in obtaining the continuum limit of non-perturbative Lorentzian quantum gravity., Comment: 41 pages, 42 figures, matches published version well

A non-perturbative study on the quantum fluctuations of light ray propagation through a quantum region of spacetime is long overdue. Within the theory of Lorentzian simplicial quantum gravity, we compute the probabilities for a test light ray to land at different locations after travelling through a symmetry-reduced box region in 2,3 and 4 spacetime dimensions. It is found that for fixed boundary conditions, light ray fluctuations are generically large when all coupling constants are relatively small in absolute value. For fixed coupling constants, as the boundary size is decreased light ray fluctuations first increase and then decrease in a 2D theory with the cosmological constant, Einstein-Hilbert and R-squared terms. While in 3D and 4D theories with the cosmological constant and Einstein-Hilbert terms, as the boundary size is decreased light ray fluctuations just increase. Incidentally, when studying 2D quantum gravity we show that the global time-space duality with the cosmological constant and Einstein-Hilbert terms noted previously also holds when arbitrary even powers of the Ricci scalar are added. We close by discussing how light ray fluctuations can be used in obtaining the continuum limit of non-perturbative Lorentzian quantum gravity., Comment: 41 pages, 42 figures, matches published version well

Many non-trivial ideas have been proposed to resolve singularities in quantum gravity. In this short note I argue that singularity resolution can be trivial in gravitational path integrals, because geodesically incomplete singular spacetimes are usually not included in the sum. For theories where this holds, there is no need to develop non-trivial ideas on singularity resolution. Instead, efforts should better be directed to understand tunneling processes and complex-valued spacetimes., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, comments welcome

Vision transformers have recently achieved competitive results across various vision tasks but still suffer from heavy computation costs when processing a large number of tokens. Many advanced approaches have been developed to reduce the total number of tokens in large-scale vision transformers, especially for image classification tasks. Typically, they select a small group of essential tokens according to their relevance with the class token, then fine-tune the weights of the vision transformer. Such fine-tuning is less practical for dense prediction due to the much heavier computation and GPU memory cost than image classification. In this paper, we focus on a more challenging problem, i.e., accelerating large-scale vision transformers for dense prediction without any additional re-training or fine-tuning. In response to the fact that high-resolution representations are necessary for dense prediction, we present two non-parametric operators, a token clustering layer to decrease the number of tokens and a token reconstruction layer to increase the number of tokens. The following steps are performed to achieve this: (i) we use the token clustering layer to cluster the neighboring tokens together, resulting in low-resolution representations that maintain the spatial structures; (ii) we apply the following transformer layers only to these low-resolution representations or clustered tokens; and (iii) we use the token reconstruction layer to re-create the high-resolution representations from the refined low-resolution representations. The results obtained by our method are promising on five dense prediction tasks, including object detection, semantic segmentation, panoptic segmentation, instance segmentation, and depth estimation., Comment: Accepted at NeurIPS 2022, camera-ready version, 22 pages, 14 figures

One-to-one set matching is a key design for DETR to establish its end-to-end capability, so that object detection does not require a hand-crafted NMS (non-maximum suppression) to remove duplicate detections. This end-to-end signature is important for the versatility of DETR, and it has been generalized to broader vision tasks. However, we note that there are few queries assigned as positive samples and the one-to-one set matching significantly reduces the training efficacy of positive samples. We propose a simple yet effective method based on a hybrid matching scheme that combines the original one-to-one matching branch with an auxiliary one-to-many matching branch during training. Our hybrid strategy has been shown to significantly improve accuracy. In inference, only the original one-to-one match branch is used, thus maintaining the end-to-end merit and the same inference efficiency of DETR. The method is named H-DETR, and it shows that a wide range of representative DETR methods can be consistently improved across a wide range of visual tasks, including DeformableDETR, PETRv2, PETR, and TransTrack, among others. The code is available at: https://github.com/HDETR, Comment: CVPR 2023. The code is available at: https://github.com/HDETR

An important task faced by all approaches of quantum gravity is to incorporate superpositions and quantify quantum uncertainties of spacetime causal relations. We address this task in 2D. By identifying a global $Z_2$ symmetry of 1+1D quantum gravity, we show that gravitational path integral configurations come in equal amplitude pairs with timelike and spacelike relations exchanged. As a consequence, any two points are equally probable to be timelike and spacelike separated in a universe without boundary conditions. In the context of simplicial quantum gravity we identify a local symmetry of the action which shows that even with boundary conditions causal uncertainties are generically present. Depending on the boundary conditions, causal uncertainties can still be large and even maximal., Comment: matches well published version

Evaluating gravitational path integrals in the Lorentzian has been a long-standing challenge due to the numerical sign problem. We show that this challenge can be overcome in simplicial quantum gravity. By deforming the integration contour into the complex, the sign fluctuations can be suppressed, for instance using the holomorphic gradient flow algorithm. Working through simple models, we show that this algorithm enables efficient Monte Carlo simulations for Lorentzian simplicial quantum gravity. In order to allow complex deformations of the integration contour, we provide a manifestly holomorphic formula for Lorentzian simplicial gravity. This leads to a complex version of simplicial gravity that generalizes the Euclidean and Lorentzian cases. Outside the context of numerical computation, complex simplicial gravity is also relevant to studies of singularity resolving processes with complex semi-classical solutions. Along the way, we prove a complex version of the Gauss-Bonnet theorem, which may be of independent interest., Comment: matches well published version

Evaluating gravitational path integrals in the Lorentzian has been a long-standing challenge due to the numerical sign problem. We show that this challenge can be overcome in simplicial quantum gravity. By deforming the integration contour into the complex, the sign fluctuations can be suppressed, for instance using the holomorphic gradient flow algorithm. Working through simple models, we show that this algorithm enables efficient Monte Carlo simulations for Lorentzian simplicial quantum gravity. In order to allow complex deformations of the integration contour, we provide a manifestly holomorphic formula for Lorentzian simplicial gravity. This leads to a complex version of simplicial gravity that generalizes the Euclidean and Lorentzian cases. Outside the context of numerical computation, complex simplicial gravity is also relevant to studies of singularity resolving processes with complex semi-classical solutions. Along the way, we prove a complex version of the Gauss-Bonnet theorem, which may be of independent interest., Comment: 52 pages, 23 figures. Mistaken statements about other path integral contours corrected

An important task faced by all approaches of quantum gravity is to incorporate superpositions and quantify quantum uncertainties of spacetime causal relations. We address this task in 2D. By identifying a global $Z_2$ symmetry of 1+1D quantum gravity, we show that gravitational path integral configurations come in equal amplitude pairs with timelike and spacelike relations exchanged. As a consequence, any two points are equally probable to be timelike and spacelike separated in a universe without boundary conditions. In the context of simplicial quantum gravity we identify a local symmetry of the action which shows that even with boundary conditions causal uncertainties are generically present. Depending on the boundary conditions, causal uncertainties can still be large and even maximal., Comment: matches well published version

Evaluating gravitational path integrals in the Lorentzian has been a long-standing challenge due to the numerical sign problem. We show that this challenge can be overcome in simplicial quantum gravity. By deforming the integration contour into the complex, the sign fluctuations can be suppressed, for instance using the holomorphic gradient flow algorithm. Working through simple models, we show that this algorithm enables efficient Monte Carlo simulations for Lorentzian simplicial quantum gravity. In order to allow complex deformations of the integration contour, we provide a manifestly holomorphic formula for Lorentzian simplicial gravity. This leads to a complex version of simplicial gravity that generalizes the Euclidean and Lorentzian cases. Outside the context of numerical computation, complex simplicial gravity is also relevant to studies of singularity resolving processes with complex semi-classical solutions. Along the way, we prove a complex version of the Gauss-Bonnet theorem, which may be of independent interest., Comment: matches well published version

An important task faced by all approaches of quantum gravity is to incorporate superpositions and quantify quantum uncertainties of spacetime causal relations. We address this task in 2D. By identifying a global $Z_2$ symmetry of 1+1D quantum gravity, we show that gravitational path integral configurations come in equal amplitude pairs with timelike and spacelike relations exchanged. As a consequence, any two points are equally probable to be timelike and spacelike separated in a universe without boundary conditions. In the context of simplicial quantum gravity we identify a local symmetry of the action which shows that even with boundary conditions causal uncertainties are generically present. Depending on the boundary conditions, causal uncertainties can still be large and even maximal., Comment: matches well published version

An important task faced by all approaches of quantum gravity is to incorporate superpositions and quantify quantum uncertainties of spacetime causal relations. We address this task in 2D. By identifying a global $Z_2$ symmetry of 1+1D quantum gravity, we show that gravitational path integral configurations come in equal amplitude pairs with timelike and spacelike relations exchanged. As a consequence, any two points are equally probable to be timelike and spacelike separated in a universe without boundary conditions. In the context of simplicial quantum gravity we identify a local symmetry of the action which shows that even with boundary conditions causal uncertainties are generically present. Depending on the boundary conditions, causal uncertainties can still be large and even maximal., Comment: matches well published version

Evaluating gravitational path integrals in the Lorentzian has been a long-standing challenge due to the numerical sign problem. We show that this challenge can be overcome in simplicial quantum gravity. By deforming the integration contour into the complex, the sign fluctuations can be suppressed, for instance using the holomorphic gradient flow algorithm. Working through simple models, we show that this algorithm enables efficient Monte Carlo simulations for Lorentzian simplicial quantum gravity. In order to allow complex deformations of the integration contour, we provide a manifestly holomorphic formula for Lorentzian simplicial gravity. This leads to a complex version of simplicial gravity that generalizes the Euclidean and Lorentzian cases. Outside the context of numerical computation, complex simplicial gravity is also relevant to studies of singularity resolving processes with complex semi-classical solutions. Along the way, we prove a complex version of the Gauss-Bonnet theorem, which may be of independent interest., Comment: matches well published version

In the past few years, transformers have achieved promising performances on various computer vision tasks. Unfortunately, the immense inference overhead of most existing vision transformers withholds their from being deployed on edge devices such as cell phones and smart watches. Knowledge distillation is a widely used paradigm for compressing cumbersome architectures via transferring information to a compact student. However, most of them are designed for convolutional neural networks (CNNs), which do not fully investigate the character of vision transformer (ViT). In this paper, we utilize the patch-level information and propose a fine-grained manifold distillation method. Specifically, we train a tiny student model to match a pre-trained teacher model in the patch-level manifold space. Then, we decouple the manifold matching loss into three terms with careful design to further reduce the computational costs for the patch relationship. Equipped with the proposed method, a DeiT-Tiny model containing 5M parameters achieves 76.5% top-1 accuracy on ImageNet-1k, which is +2.0% higher than previous distillation approaches. Transfer learning results on other classification benchmarks and downstream vision tasks also demonstrate the superiority of our method over the state-of-the-art algorithms.

Indefinite causal structure is generically present in theories of quantum gravity admitting a path integral formulation. We show that summing over causal structures eliminates ultraviolet divergences of matter QFT and resolves spacetime singularities using the non-perturbative World Quantum Gravity approach. Independent information-theoretic and model-independent considerations suggest that the mechanism of ultraviolet regularization by indefinite causal structure also applies to other theories of quantum gravity., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. Comments are welcome!

A correlational dialect is introduced within the quantum theory language to give a unified treatment of finite-dimensional informational/operational quantum theories, infinite-dimensional relativistic quantum theories, and quantum gravity. Theories are written in terms of correlation diagrams which specify correlation types and weights. Grouping similar correlation diagrams leads to generalized Feynman diagrams, which in special cases reduce to the familiar Feynman diagrams from quantum field theories. The correlational formalism is applied in a study of correlation constraints, revealing new classes of quantum processes that evade previous characterizations of general quantum processes. The results apply to quantum theories of various kinds, including time-asymmetric theories, time-symmetric theories, theories without predefined time, and theories with indefinite causal structures., Comment: v2 with updated discussions on Feynman diagrams; 6 pages, 2 figures, plus appendix

Indefinite causal structure is generically present in theories of quantum gravity admitting a path integral formulation. We show that summing over causal structures eliminates ultraviolet divergences of matter QFT and resolves spacetime singularities using the non-perturbative World Quantum Gravity approach. Independent information-theoretic and model-independent considerations suggest that the mechanism of ultraviolet regularization by indefinite causal structure also applies to other theories of quantum gravity., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. Comments are welcome!

A correlational dialect is introduced within the quantum theory language to give a unified treatment of finite-dimensional informational/operational quantum theories, infinite-dimensional relativistic quantum theories, and quantum gravity. Theories are written in terms of correlation diagrams which specify correlation types and weights. Grouping similar correlation diagrams leads to generalized Feynman diagrams, which in special cases reduce to the familiar Feynman diagrams from quantum field theories. The correlational formalism is applied in a study of correlation constraints, revealing new classes of quantum processes that evade previous characterizations of general quantum processes. The results apply to quantum theories of various kinds, including time-asymmetric theories, time-symmetric theories, theories without predefined time, and theories with indefinite causal structures., Comment: v2 with updated discussions on Feynman diagrams; 6 pages, 2 figures, plus appendix

A new path integral approach of quantum gravity based on relational variables and quantum test objects is presented. We take as a basic variables the squared invariant distance. This invariant quantity is technically simpler to work with than variant quantities such as the metric tensor. It also facilitates the studies of matter coupling and quantum spacetime causal structures. In contrast to approaches based on piecewise linear geometries, here gravity is captured by its effects on quantum test particles and fields. By an observation of Parker, under a Feynman sum a gravitational phase can be traded into a Van Vleck-Morette determinant term. This leads to a new candidate path integral for gravity, which can potentially be computed efficient in the Lorentzian signature. We discuss some ambiguities left in the path integral measure, which invite further clarifications., Comment: mathces well published version

In fundamental theories that accounts for quantum gravitational effects, the spacetime causal structure is expected to be quantum uncertain. Previous studies of quantum causal structure focused on finite-dimensional systems. Here we present an algebraic framework that incorporates both finite- and infinite-dimensional systems including quantum fields. Thanks to the absence of a definite spacetime causal structure, Lagrangian quantum field theories can be studied on a quantum superposition of spacetimes with a point identification structure., Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure

A new path integral approach of quantum gravity based on relational variables and quantum test objects is presented. We take as a basic variables the squared invariant distance. This invariant quantity is technically simpler to work with than variant quantities such as the metric tensor. It also facilitates the studies of matter coupling and quantum spacetime causal structures. In contrast to approaches based on piecewise linear geometries, here gravity is captured by its effects on quantum test particles and fields. By an observation of Parker, under a Feynman sum a gravitational phase can be traded into a Van Vleck-Morette determinant term. This leads to a new candidate path integral for gravity, which can potentially be computed efficient in the Lorentzian signature. We discuss some ambiguities left in the path integral measure, which invite further clarifications., Comment: mathces well published version

In fundamental theories that accounts for quantum gravitational effects, the spacetime causal structure is expected to be quantum uncertain. Previous studies of quantum causal structure focused on finite-dimensional systems. Here we present an algebraic framework that incorporates both finite- and infinite-dimensional systems including quantum fields. Thanks to the absence of a definite spacetime causal structure, Lagrangian quantum field theories can be studied on a quantum superposition of spacetimes with a point identification structure., Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure

We show that quantum indefinite causal structure generically reduce two-party correlations. For significant indefiniteness in the causal structure captured by some general conditions, the correlation is shown to be reduced down to zero. The result offers an operational model-independent ultraviolet regularization mechanism. It may be applied to various approaches of quantum gravity that allow quantum indefinite spacetime causal structure., Comment: 5 pages, no figure

Quantum field theory (QFT) in classical spacetime has revealed interesting and puzzling aspects about gravitational systems, in particular black hole thermodynamics and its information processing. Although quantum gravitational effects may be relevant for a better understanding of these topics, a commonly accepted framework for studying QFT with quantum gravitational effects is missing. We present a theory for studying quantum fields in the presence of quantum indefinite causal structure. This theory incorporates quantum properties of spacetime causal structure in a model independent way, and exposes universal features of quantum spacetime which are independent of the details about its microscopic degrees of freedom (strings, loops, causal sets...)., Comment: Gravity Research Foundation 2018 essay contest entry

In classical spacetime null geodesics give information on where free massless particles travel. In quantum spacetime where quantum indefiniteness renders spacetime fuzzy null geodesics as sharp trajectories cannot be retained. We propose a "tendency postulate" that gives information on where free massless objects tend to travel based exclusively on meaningful notions in quantum spacetime. It says that free massless objects tend to trace large quantum causal fluctuations. We implement the tendency postulate in concrete models of quantum spacetime that describe causal fluctuation. The tendency postulate supports the suggestion that information can leak out of black holes in a quantum spacetime without introducing superluminal signalling., Comment: 29 pages, 1 figure

We show that quantum indefinite causal structure generically reduce two-party correlations. For significant indefiniteness in the causal structure captured by some general conditions, the correlation is shown to be reduced down to zero. The result offers an operational model-independent ultraviolet regularization mechanism. It may be applied to various approaches of quantum gravity that allow quantum indefinite spacetime causal structure., Comment: 5 pages, no figure

Quantum field theory (QFT) in classical spacetime has revealed interesting and puzzling aspects about gravitational systems, in particular black hole thermodynamics and its information processing. Although quantum gravitational effects may be relevant for a better understanding of these topics, a commonly accepted framework for studying QFT with quantum gravitational effects is missing. We present a theory for studying quantum fields in the presence of quantum indefinite causal structure. This theory incorporates quantum properties of spacetime causal structure in a model independent way, and exposes universal features of quantum spacetime which are independent of the details about its microscopic degrees of freedom (strings, loops, causal sets...)., Comment: Gravity Research Foundation 2018 essay contest entry

In classical spacetime null geodesics give information on where free massless particles travel. In quantum spacetime where quantum indefiniteness renders spacetime fuzzy null geodesics as sharp trajectories cannot be retained. We propose a "tendency postulate" that gives information on where free massless objects tend to travel based exclusively on meaningful notions in quantum spacetime. It says that free massless objects tend to trace large quantum causal fluctuations. We implement the tendency postulate in concrete models of quantum spacetime that describe causal fluctuation. The tendency postulate supports the suggestion that information can leak out of black holes in a quantum spacetime without introducing superluminal signalling., Comment: 29 pages, 1 figure

An ammonium–crown ether host–guest supramolecular cation-templated synthetic methodology has been developed to construct a structurally unprecedented heterobicluster–metal coordination polymer (HCM-CP 1) based on tetranuclear clusters [WS4Cu3]+ with different connection environments, pentanuclear clusters [WS4Cu4]2+, and Cu+ building metal ions. HCM-CP 1 exhibits enhanced NLO properties, which may be ascribed to the incorporation of diverse building cluster components

TiO2/reduced graphene oxide (RGO) nanocomposites Gx (RGO titania nanocomposite, x grams tetrabutyl titanate per 0.03 g RGO, x = 0.25, 0.50, 1.00) were prepared by a hydrothermal method: graphene oxide was reduced to RGO in a 2:1 water:ethanol mixture in the presence of varying quantities of tetrabutyl titanate, which deposited as TiO2 on the RGO sheets. The nanocomposites were characterized by a combination of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, diffuse reflectance ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy, photoluminescence spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray powder diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy studies. The nanocomposite G0.25 exhibits enhanced nonlinear optical properties compared to its individual components, which is ascribed to a combination of mechanisms. The role of defects and electron/energy transfer in the optical limiting performance of G0.25 was clarified with the help of Raman and photoluminescence spectroscopies. Intensity-dependent switching between reverse saturable absorption and saturable absorption behavior was observed with the G0.50 nanocomposite.

Three unusual three-dimensional (3D) tetrazine chromophore-based metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) {(Et4N)[WS4Cu3(CN)2(4,4′-pytz)0.5]}n (1), {[MoS4Cu4(CN)2(

Semiconductor-semiconductor hetero-nanorods (Ag2Se-CdSe and Ag2Se-ZnSe) with high crystallinity have been synthesized by a facile and low-cost method. High resolution transmission electron microscopy investigations reveal that the growth follows a catalyst-assisted mechanism. A preliminary investigation of nonlinear optical properties shows that the hetero-nanorods exhibit significantly enhanced third-order nonlinear optical properties. The free carrier absorption cross-section of Ag2Se-CdSe hetero-nanorods is one order of magnitude higher than that of the corresponding single component CdSe nanocrystals. The results obtained in this study represent a new approach to the design and construction of metal selenide hetero-nanorods with high crystallinity and enhanced nonlinear optical capabilities.