Related papers: Refraction of light by light in vacuum
We study the propagation of 0.05-1 TW power, ultrafast laser pulses in a 10 meter long rubidium vapor cell. The central wavelength of the laser is resonant with the $D_2$ line of rubidium and the peak intensity in the $10^{12}-10^{14}…
We investigate the interplay of diffraction and nonlinear effects during propagation of very short light pulses. Adapting the factorization approach to the problem at hand by keeping the transverse-derivative terms apart from the residual…
We report experiments of light transmissivity at wavelengths: 532 and 400 nm, through an Au film with a wedge shape. Our results mimic the negative refraction reported by others for so-called left handed materials. A mimic of negative…
We investigate intensity of the parametric down conversion of ultrashort, ultraviolet pulse both in a low- and high-conversion regime. In the first regime, we develop a simple analytical expressions for the photon flux of the fluorescence.…
We report a novel experimental technique for the comparison of ionization processes in ultrafast laser pulses irrespective of pulse ellipticity. Multiple ionization of xenon by 50 fs 790 nm, linearly and circularly polarized laser pulses is…
Research on photonics and metamaterials constantly challenges our intuitive understanding of the behaviour of light. In recent years we have seen negative refraction, focusing of light by a flat slab, a ``perfect'' prism, and an…
The quantum vacuum constitutes a fascinating medium of study, in particular since near-future laser facilities will be able to probe the nonlinear nature of this vacuum. There has been a large number of proposed tests of the low-energy,…
A comprehensive theory is proposed to describe the propagation and absorption of ultra-intense, short laser pulse through the under-dense plasma. The kinetic aspects of plasma are fully incorporated using extensive particle-in-cell (PIC)…
White light spectral interferometry is applied to measure the refractive index in absorbing liquids in the spectral range from 400 to 1000 nm. We analyze the influence of absorption on the visibility of interferometric fringes and,…
Relativistic electrons generated by the interaction of petawatt-class short laser pulses with solid targets can be used to generate bright X-rays via bremsstrahlung. The efficiency of laser energy transfer into these electrons depends on…
We study vacuum birefringence and x-ray photon scattering in the head-on collision of x-ray free electron and high-intensity laser pulses. Resorting to analytical approximations for the numbers of attainable signal photons, we analyze the…
The dynamics of an electron driven by arbitrary plane wave laser radiation is formulated as a relativistically and mathematically exact refraction process based on an exact index of refraction. This reformulation leads to that index as an…
Semiclassical methods are used to study the nonlinear interaction of light in vacuum in the context of four wave mixing. This study is motivated by a desire to investigate the possibility of using recently developed powerful ultrashort…
We experimentally characterize the positions of the diffraction maxima of a phase grating on a screen, for laser light at oblique incidence (so-called off-plane diffraction or conical diffraction). We discuss the general case of off-plane…
Two methods of refractometry in reflected light from optical surface of samples are considered and studied experimentally. Methods are grounded on results of Fresnel theory of concerning light reflectivity at near normal incidence and…
A collective, macroscopic signature to detect radiation friction in laser-plasma experiments is proposed. In the interaction of superintense circularly polarized laser pulses with high density targets, the effective dissipation due to…
A theory is presented (and supported by numerical simulations) for phase-coherent reflection of light by a disordered medium which either absorbs or amplifies radiation. The distribution of reflection eigenvalues is shown to be the Laguerre…
We report on experimental observation of electromagnetically induced transparency and slow-light (vg ~ c/607) in atomic sodium vapor, as a potential medium for a recently proposed experiment on slow-light enhanced relative rotation sensing…
This paper provides a theoretical investigation of negative refraction and focusing of elastic guided waves in a free-standing plate with a step-like thickness change. Under certain conditions, a positive phase velocity (forward) Lamb mode…
Birefringence is one of the fascinating properties of the vacuum of quantum electrodynamics (QED) in strong electromagnetic fields. The scattering of linearly polarized incident probe photons into a perpendicularly polarized mode provides a…