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The ability to generate phase-stabilized trains of ultrafast laser pulses by mode-locking underpins photonics research in fields, such as precision metrology and spectroscopy. However, the complexity of conventional mode-locked laser systems has hindered their realization at the nanoscale. Here we demonstrate that GaAs-AlGaAs nanowire lasers are capable of emitting pairs of phase-locked picosecond laser pulses with a repetition frequency up to 200 GHz when subject to incoherent pulsed optical excitation. By probing the two-pulse interference spectra, we show that pulse pairs remain mutually coherent over timescales extending to 30 ps, much longer than the emitted laser pulse duration (≤3 ps). Simulations performed by solving the optical Bloch equations produce good quantitative agreement with experiments, revealing how the phase information is stored in the gain medium close to transparency. Our results open the way to phase locking of nanowires integrated onto photonic circuits, optical injection locking and applications, such as on-chip Ramsey comb spectroscopy., Although nanolasers have been an active field of research for over a decade, mode-locking on the nanoscale has not been achieved yet. Here, Mayer et al. show that semiconductor nanowire lasers can emit pairs of phase-locked picosecond pulses when the nanowires are incoherently pumped.

A time of flight-photoemission electron microscope is combined with a single-shot stereographic above-threshold ionization phase meter for studying attosecond control of electrons in tailored plasmonic nanostructures spatially and energetically via a carrier-envelope phase tagging technique. First carrier-envelope phase-resolved measurements of gold nanoparticles on gold plane and surface roughness from a gold film show an apparent carrier-envelope phase modulation with a period of π. This modulation is found to originate from an intensity dependence of the photoelectron spectra and the carrier-envelope phase measurement rather than from an intrinsic carrier-envelope phase dependence, which is confirmed by simulations. This useful finding suggests that intensity tagging should be considered for phase tagging experiments on plasmonic nanostructures with low carrier-envelope phase sensitivity in order to correct for the intensity-related carrier-envelope phase artifact.