Self-bound droplets of light with orbital angular momentum
Abstract
Systems with competing attractive and repulsive interactions have a tendency to condense into droplets. This is the case for water in a sink, liquid helium and dipolar atomic gases. Here, we consider a photon fluid which is formed in the transverse plane of a monochromatic laser beam propagating in an attractive (focusing) nonlocal nonlinear medium. In this setting we demonstrate the formation of the optical analogue of matter wave droplets, and study their properties. The system we consider admits droplets that carry orbital angular momentum. We find bound states possessing liquid-like properties, such as bulk pressure and compressibility. Interestingly, these droplets of light, as opposed to optical vortices, form due to the competition between long-range s-wave (monopole) and d-wave (quadrupole) interactions as well as diffraction.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1801.08539,
title = {Self-bound droplets of light with orbital angular momentum},
author = {Niclas Westerberg and Kali E. Wilson and Callum W. Duncan and Daniele Faccio and Ewan M. Wright and Patrik Öhberg and Manuel Valiente},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1801.08539},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
11 pages, 6 figures. General improvements and restructuring, supplementary material now part of main text