Related papers: Evolution and the Calcite Eye Lens
Crystallization is a key step in macromolecular structure determination by crystallography. While a robust theoretical treatment of the process is available, due to the complexity of the system, the experimental process is still largely one…
We study a class of gravitational lensing systems consisting of an inclined ring/belt, with and without an added point mass at the centre. We show that a common feature of such systems are so-called "pseudo-caustics", across which the…
Glass-forming liquids have been extensively studied in recent decades, but there is still no theory that fully describes these systems, and the diversity of treatments is in itself a barrier to understanding. Here we introduce a new simple…
Variability in gravitationally lensed quasars can be due to intrinsic fluctuations of the quasar or due to ``microlensing'' by compact objects along the line of sight. If disentangled from each other, microlens-induced variability can be…
Animal vision spans a great range of complexity, with systems evolving to detect variations in optical intensity, distribution, colour, and polarisation. Polarisation vision systems studied to date detect one to four channels of linear…
In this article, we present an analysis of the stability of optical lattices. Starting with the study of an unstable optical lattice, we establish a necessary and sufficient condition for intrinsic phase stability, and discuss two practical…
Gravitational lensing in clusters of galaxies is an efficient tool to probe the mass distribution of galaxies and clusters, high redshift objects thanks to the gravitational amplification, and the geometry of the universe. We review some…
Gas in the interstellar matter is generally organized in filamentary structures, which may be also relevant for a complementary explanation of the dark matter in the Galactic halo. We examine the possibility that such structures may act as…
Silicon carbide has emerged as a promising material platform for quantum photonics and nonlinear optics. These properties make the development of integrated photonic components in high-quality silicon carbide a critical aspect for the…
Recently suggested transformation optics-based magnifying Maxwell fisheye lenses, which are made of two half-lenses of different radii, has been fabricated and characterized. The lens action is based on control of polarization-dependent…
Gravitational lensing caused by the gravitational field of massive objects has been studied and acknowledged for a long period of time. In this paper, however, we propose a different mechanism where the bending of light stems from the…
Microlensing and occultation are generally studied in the geometric optics limit. However, diffraction may be important when recently discovered Kuiper-Belt objects (KBOs) occult distant stars. In particular the effects of diffraction…
Fresnel lenses offer the possibility of concentrating the flux of X-rays or gamma-rays flux falling on a geometric area of many square metres onto a focal point which need only be a millimetre or so in diameter (and which may even be very…
In crystal optics the special status of the rest frame of the crystal means that space-time symmetry is less restrictive of electrodynamic phenomena than it is of static electromagnetic effects. A relativistic justification for this claim…
Growing crystals form a cavity when placed against a wall. The birth of the cavity is observed both by optical microscopy of sodium chlorate crystals (NaClO$_3$) growing in the vicinity of a glass surface, and in simulations with a thin…
Of order one in 10^3 quasars and high-redshift galaxies appears in the sky as multiple images as a result of gravitational lensing by unrelated galaxies and clusters that happen to be in the foreground. While the basic phenomenon is a…
We study gravitational lensing by spiral galaxies, using realistic models consisting of halo, disk, and bulge components combined to produce a flat rotation curve. Proper dynamical normalization of the models is critical because a disk…
We study in detail gravitational lensing caused by a supermassive fermion star and compare it with lensing by a black hole of the same mass. It is argued that lensing effects, being very distinct, may shed some light on the yet unexplained…
We investigate the gravitational lensing properties of dark matter halos with Burkert profiles. We derive an analytic expression for the lens equation and use it to compute the magnification, impact parameter and image separations for…
Ultrafast, femtosecond laser pulse interaction with dielectric materials has shown them to have significantly higher laser fluence threshold requirements, as compared to metals and semiconductors, for laser material modification, such as…