The direct laser synthesis of periodically nanostructured 2D transition metal dichalcogenide (2D-TMD) films, from single source precursors, is presented here. Laser synthesis of MoS₂ and WS₂ tracks is achieved by localized thermal dissociation of Mo and W thiosalts, caused by the strong absorption of continuous wave (c.w.) visible laser radiation by the precursor film. Moreover, within a range of irradiation conditions we have observed occurrence of 1D and 2D spontaneous periodic modulation in the thickness of the laser-synthesized TMD films, which in some cases is so extreme that it results in the formation of isolated nanoribbons with a width of ~200 nm and a length of several micrometers. The formation of these nanostructures is attributed to the effect that is known as laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS), which is caused by self-organized modulation of the incident laser intensity distribution due to optical feedback from surface roughness. We have fabricated two terminal photoconductive detectors based on nanostructured and continuous films and we show that the nanostructured TMD films exhibit enhanced photo-response, with photocurrent yield increased by three orders of magnitude as compared to their continuous counterparts.

We investigated the spectral properties of squeezed light generated via parametric down-conversion in the high-gain regime, considering both unapodized and apodized dispersion-engineered waveguides. The gain-dependent evolution of these states is examined starting from the low-gain regime, which includes both highly correlated and nearly uncorrelated cases. For the unapodized configuration, our simulated results show a monotonic increase in spectral purity with gain, whereas for some of the apodized configuration, they exhibit a nonmonotonic dependence, initially decreasing and then recovering at higher gain. By combining Schmidt-mode analysis with a group-velocity-based interpretation, we explain why different dispersion conditions exhibit distinct gain-dependent behavior, specifically that rapid purification occurs when the pump group velocity lies between those of the signal and idler. Our study shows that the evolution of spectral purity is governed primarily by the underlying dispersion of the waveguide. These results demonstrate that dispersion engineering and parametric gain can be jointly exploited to tailor the spectral-mode structure of squeezed-light sources, enabling their optimization for a broad range of quantum applications.