Related papers: Revisiting the round bottom flask rainbow experime…
The study is about a basic shadow experiment, which was enriched with a simulation to understand the reasoning of participants when we use a trick. Two light sources create an umbra and penumbra behind the objects. With this experiment, we…
By analogy to the three dimensional optical bottle beam, we introduce the plasmonic bottle beam: a two dimensional surface wave which features a lattice of plasmonic bottles, i.e. alternating regions of bright focii surrounded by low…
The mechanism of rainbow formation proposed by Descartes and Newton is analyzed. The parameters of rainbows on Venus are calculated using geometric optics. Assuming that solar radiation is refracted by spherical droplets of aqueous sulfuric…
The conditions in which meridional recirculations appear in swirling flows above a fixed wall are analysed. In the classical Bodew\"adt problem, where the swirl tends towards an aysmptotic value away from the wall, the well-known "tea-cup…
We develop a local realist analysis of parametric down conversion, based on the recognition that the pump field, instead of down converting spontaneously, does so through its nonlinear coupling with a real zeropoint, or "vacuum"…
Increasing any degree of freedom of light beam may open a wide application area of this special light beam. Vortex beam with a dimension of orbital angular momentum (OAM) as a useful light source has been widely applied in many fields.…
The visible reflectance spectrum of many solar system bodies changes with changing viewing geometry for reasons not fully understood. It is often observed to redden (increasing spectral slope) with increasing solar phase angle, an effect…
Magic windows (or mirrors) consist of optical devices with a surface deformation or thickness distribution devised in such a way to form a desired image. The associated image intensity distribution has been shown to be related to the…
We present for the first time evidence for the existence of a dynamically refracted primary bow for $^{9}$Be+$^{16}$O scattering. This is demonstrated through the use of coupled channel calculations with an extended double folding potential…
From February to May of 2024 the Any Light Particle Search II (ALPS II) conducted its first science campaign using the `light-shining-through-a-wall' technique to search for pseudo-Goldstone bosons that lie beyond the Standard Model of…
We present a novel experiment on interfacial wave dynamics in orbitally shaken cylindrical vessels containing two- and three fluid layers. The experiment was designed as a hydrodynamical model for both alu- minum reduction cells and liquid…
We employ conical refraction of light in a biaxial crystal to create an optical bottle for trapping and manipulation of particles. We show that by just varying the polarization of the input light the bottle can be opened and closed at will.…
In this note we revisit the Kovacs effect, concerning the way in which the volume of a glass-forming liquid, which has been driven out of equilibrium, changes with time while the system evolves towards a metastable state. The theoret- ical…
We consider wave propagation along fluid-loaded structures which take the form of an elastic plate augmented by an array of resonators forming a metasurface, that is, a surface structured with sub-wavelength resonators. Such surfaces have…
Advances in micro-technology of the last years have made it possible to carry optics textbooks experiments over to atomic and molecular beams, such as diffraction by a double slit or transmission grating. The usual wave-optical approach…
A subgraph of an edge-coloured graph is called rainbow if all its edges have distinct colours. The study of rainbow subgraphs goes back to the work of Euler on Latin squares and has been the focus of extensive research ever since. Many…
After reviewing the pioneering work by Zel'Dovich in which radiation is amplified perpendicular to the axis of a rotating conductor, we consider an alternative scattering arrangement. We demonstrate superradiant amplification of…
Since Kamiokande, the basic design of water-Cherenkov detectors has not changed: the walls of a water tank are lined with photodetectors that capture Cherenkov photons produced by relativistic particles. However, with this design the…
We present an engaging levitation experiment that students can perform at home or in a simple laboratory using everyday objects. A cork, modified to be slightly denser than water, is placed in a jug containing tap water and coarse kitchen…
We investigate a distortion in redshift-space which causes galaxies to appear to lie in walls concentric about the observer, forming a rough bull's-eye pattern. We simulate what an observer would see in a thin slice of redshift-space,…