Related papers: All-optical switching and multistability in photon…
Chromonic liquid crystals (CLCs) are lyotropic materials which are attracting growing interest for their adaptability to living systems. A considerable body of works has been devoted to exploring their properties and applications. In this…
We describe propagation of light in a gas with periodic density modulation, demonstrating photonic-crystal-like refraction with negative refraction angles. We address the role of poorly defined boundaries and damping, and derive an optical…
The recent research of topological photonics has not only proposed and realized novel topological phenomena such as one-way broadband propagation and robust transport of light, but also designed and fabricated photonic devices with…
The flourishing of topological photonics in the last decade was achieved mainly due to developments in linear topological photonic structures. However, when nonlinearity is introduced, many intriguing questions arise. For example, are there…
Discontinuous quantum phase transitions and the associated metastability play central roles in diverse areas of physics ranging from ferromagnetism to false vacuum decay in the early universe. Using strongly-interacting ultracold atoms in…
Time-resolved imaging reveals that the helicity dependent all-optical switching (HD-AOS) of Co/Pt ferromagnetic multilayers proceeds by two stages. First one involves the helicity independent and stochastic nucleation of reversed magnetic…
Photonic hyper-crystals combine the most interesting features of hyperbolic metamaterials and photonic crystals. Since the dispersion law of extraordinary photons in hyperbolic metamaterials does not exhibit the usual diffraction limit,…
The Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless mechanism, in which a phase transition is mediated by the proliferation of topological defects, governs the critical behaviour of a wide range of equilibrium two-dimensional systems with a continuous…
Topological phase transitions, which have fascinated generations of physicists, are always demarcated by gap closures. In this work, we propose very simple 2D photonic crystal lattices with gap closure points, i.e. band degeneracies…
Organic electro-optic materials have demonstrated promising performance in developing electro-optic phase shifters. Their integration with other silicon photonic processes, nanofabrication complexities, and durability remains to be…
Realizing a strong interaction between individual optical photons is an important objective of research in quantum science and technology. Since photons do not interact directly, this goal requires, e.g., an optical medium in which the…
Nonlinear spatio-temporal systems are the basis for countless physical phenomena in such diverse fields as ecology, optics, electronics and neuroscience. The canonical approach to unify models originating from different fields is the normal…
Topological defects are a ubiquitous phenomenon in diverse physical systems. In nematic liquid crystals (LCs), they are dynamic, physicochemically distinct, sensitive to stimuli, and are thereby promising for a range of applications.…
The on-chip integration of nonreciprocal optical devices remains a critical challenge for modern optoelectronics, as conventional magneto-optic approaches suffer from material incompatibility and excessive optical losses. Nonlinear photonic…
We study parametric interactions in a new type of nonlinear photonic structures, which is realized in the vicinity of a pair of nonlinear crystals. In this kind of structure, which we call binary, multiple nonlinear optical processes can be…
Many natural patterns and shapes, such as meandering coastlines, clouds, or turbulent flows, exhibit a characteristic complexity mathematically described by fractal geometry. In recent years, the engineering of self-similar structures in…
Supersolidity - simultaneous superfluid flow and crystalline order - has been realized in quantum atomic systems but remains unexplored in purely photonic platforms operating at weak light-matter coupling. We predict a supersolid phase of…
We show that colloidal molecular crystal states interacting with a periodic substrate, such as an optical trap array, and a rotating external field can undergo a rapid pattern switching in which the orientation of the crystal changes. In…
Understanding and controlling the director field configuration, shape, and orientation in nematic and cholesteric liquid crystals is of fundamental importance in several branches of science. Liquid crystalline droplets, also known as…
We consider interaction of a femtosecond light pulse with a one-dimensional photonic crystal with relaxing cubic nonlinearity in the regime of self-trapping. By use of numerical simulations, it is shown that, under certain conditions, the…