Related papers: Optical gears in a nanophotonic directional couple…
As any physical object, light undergoing a circular trajectory features a constant extrinsic angular momentum. Within strong curvatures, this angular momentum can match the spin momentum of a photon, thus providing the opportunity of a…
Light that carries linear or angular momentum can interact with a mechanical object giving rise to optomechanical effects. In particular, a photon transfers its intrinsic angular momentum to an object when the object either absorbs the…
Controlling the flow of light by means of nanophotonic waveguides has the potential of transforming integrated information processing much in the same way that conventional glass fibers have revolutionized global communication. Owing to the…
Photons are nonchiral particles: their handedness can be both left and right. However, when light is transversely confined, it can locally exhibit a transverse spin whose orientation is fixed by the propagation direction of the photons.…
Quantum metrology bears a great promise in enhancing measurement precision, but is unlikely to become practical in the near future. Its concepts can nevertheless inspire classical or hybrid methods of immediate value. Here, we demonstrate…
Mechanical motion of photonic devices driven by optical forces provides a profound means of coupling between optical fields. The current focus of these optomechanical effects has been on cavity optomechanics systems in which co-localized…
Optical waveguides in the form of glass fibers are the backbone of global telecommunication networks. In such optical fibers, the light is guided over long distances by continuous total internal reflection which occurs at the interface…
We experimentally demonstrate unidirectional light transmission through two-layer nanostructured materials considering that the horizontal-to-vertical-polarization conversion efficiency in the forward direction and the…
Creation of correlated photon pairs is one of the key topics in contemporary quantum optics. Here, we theoretically describe the generation of photon pairs in the process of spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a resonant spherical…
The miniaturization of mechanical machines is critical for advancing nanotechnology and reducing device footprints. Traditional efforts to downsize gears and micromotors have faced limitations at around 0.1 mm for over thirty years due to…
Light-matter interactions generally involve momentum exchange between incident photons and the target object giving rise to optical forces and torques. While typically weak, they become significant at the nanoscale, driving intense research…
Bio-compatible Au nanoparticles exhibit great advantages in the application of biomedical researches, such as bio-sensing, medical diagnosis, and cancer therapy. Bio-molecules can even be manipulated by laser tweezers with the optically…
Optical nanofiber waveguides are widely used for near-field delivery and measurement of light. Despite their versatility and efficiency, nanofibers have a critical drawback - their inability to maintain light's polarization state on…
In the last two decades, optical vortices carried by twisted light wavefronts have attracted a great deal of interest, providing not only new physical insights into light-matter interactions, but also a transformative platform for boosting…
All optical diodes (AODs) play an important role in quantum optics and information processing, in which the information is encoded by photons. Only circularly polarized lights are able to carry the spin states of photons, which has been…
Optomechanics, which explores the fundamental coupling between light and mechanical motion, has made important advances in both exploring and manipulating macroscopic mechanical oscillators down to the quantum level. However, dynamical…
Efficient delivery of light into nanoscale volumes by converting free photons into localized charge-density oscillations (surface plasmons) enables technological innovation in various fields from biosensing to photovoltaics and quantum…
A gear effect is demonstrated at parallel and cross junctions between boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) via atomistic simulations. The atoms of neighboring BNNTs are meshed together at the junctions like gear teeth through long-range…
Optically coupled nanoparticles suffer the action of multiple electromagnetic forces when they are illuminated by light. In general, two kinds of forces are commonly assumed: binding forces that make them attract/repel each other and…
The concept of angular momentum is ubiquitous to many areas of physics. In classical mechanics, a system may possess an angular momentum which can be either transverse (e.g., in a spinning wheel) or longitudinal (e.g., for a fluidic vortex)…