资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

Coherent ranging, also known as frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) laser-based light detection and ranging (lidar)(1) is used for long-range three-dimensional distance and velocimetry in autonomous driving(2,3). FMCW lidar maps distance to frequency(4,5) using frequency-chirped waveforms and simultaneously measures the Doppler shift of the reflected laser light, similar to sonar or radar(6,7) and coherent detection prevents interference from sunlight and other lidar systems. However, coherent ranging has a lower acquisition speed and requires precisely chirped(8) and highly coherent(5) laser sources, hindering widespread use of the lidar system and impeding parallelization, compared to modern time-of-flight ranging systems that use arrays of individual lasers. Here we demonstrate a massively parallel coherent lidar scheme using an ultra-low-loss photonic chip-based soliton microcomb(9). By fast chirping of the pump laser in the soliton existence range(10) of a microcomb with amplitudes of up to several gigahertz and a sweep rate of up to ten megahertz, a rapid frequency change occurs in the underlying carrier waveform of the soliton pulse stream, but the pulse-to-pulse repetition rate of the soliton pulse stream is retained. As a result, the chirp from a single narrow-linewidth pump laser is transferred to all spectral comb teeth of the soliton at once, thus enabling parallelism in the FMCW lidar. Using this approach we generate 30 distinct channels, demonstrating both parallel distance and velocity measurements at an equivalent rate of three megapixels per second, with the potential to improve sampling rates beyond 150 megapixels per second and to increase the image refresh rate of the FMCW lidar by up to two orders of magnitude without deterioration of eye safety. This approach, when combined with photonic phase arrays(11) based on nanophotonic gratings(12), provides a technological basis for compact, massively parallel and ultrahigh-frame-rate coherent lidar systems.

High-energy electron scattering that can isolate pairs of nucleons in high-momentum configurations reveals a transition to spin-independent scalar forces at small separation distances, supporting the use of point-like nucleon models to describe dense nuclear systems.

The strong nuclear interaction between nucleons (protons and neutrons) is the effective force that holds the atomic nucleus together. This force stems from fundamental interactions between quarks and gluons (the constituents of nucleons) that are described by the equations of quantum chromodynamics. However, as these equations cannot be solved directly, nuclear interactions are described using simplified models, which are well constrained at typical inter-nucleon distances(1-5) but not at shorter distances. This limits our ability to describe high-density nuclear matter such as that in the cores of neutron stars(6). Here we use high-energy electron scattering measurements that isolate nucleon pairs in short-distance, high-momentum configurations(7-9), accessing a kinematical regime that has not been previously explored by experiments, corresponding to relative momenta between the pair above 400 megaelectronvolts per c (c, speed of light in vacuum). As the relative momentum between two nucleons increases and their separation thereby decreases, we observe a transition from a spin-dependent tensor force to a predominantly spin-independent scalar force. These results demonstrate the usefulness of using such measurements to study the nuclear interaction at short distances and also support the use of point-like nucleon models with two- and three-body effective interactions to describe nuclear systems up to densities several times higher than the central density of the nucleus.