Related papers: Free-space creation of ultralong anti-diffracting …
Diffraction is a fundamental property of light propagation. Owing to this phenomenon,light diffracts out in all directions when it passes through a subwavelength slit.This imposes a fundamental limit on the transverse size of a light beam…
Diffraction-free optical beams propagate freely without change in shape and scale. Monochromatic beams that avoid diffractive spreading require two-dimensional transverse profiles, and there are no corresponding solutions for profiles…
Multi-filamentation opens new degrees of freedom for manipulating electromagnetic waves in air. However, without control, multiple filament interactions, including attraction, repulsion or fusion often result in formation of complex…
Due to their unique ability to maintain an intensity distribution upon propagation, non-diffracting light fields are used extensively in various areas of science, including optical tweezers, nonlinear optics and quantum optics, in…
Light beam with optical vortices can propagate in free space only with integer orbital angular momentum. Here, we invert this scientific consensus theoretically and experimentally by proposing light beams carrying natural non-integer…
We investigate on the properties of the recently introduced time-diffracting (TD) beams in free space. They are shown to be paraxial and quasi-monochromatic realizations of localized waves, spatiotemporal localized waves travelling…
In recent times, we experimentally realized a quite efficient modeling of the shape of diffraction-resistant optical beams; thus generating for the first time the so-called Frozen Waves (FW), whose longitudinal intensity pattern can be…
The theory of nonlinear diffraction of intensive light beams propagating through photorefractive media is developed. Diffraction occurs on a reflecting wire embedded in the nonlinear medium at relatively small angle with respect to the…
Birefringence, the polarization-dependent splitting of light in anisotropic crystals, enables diverse optical phenomena and advanced functionalities such as optical communication, nonlinear optics, and quantum optics. However, conventional…
Some years after the appearance of the so-called non-diffracting beams, there was the development of methods capable of structuring them spatially, being the so called Frozen Waves method the first and, perhaps, the most efficient one. That…
Surface topography dictates the deterministic functionality of diffraction by a surface. In order to maximize the efficiency with which a diffractive optical component, such as a grating or a diffractive lens, directs light into a chosen…
Refraction at the interface between two materials is fundamental to the interaction of light with photonic devices and to the propagation of light through the atmosphere at large. Underpinning the traditional rules for the refraction of an…
We report experimental observation and theoretical explanation of novel propagation regimes for optical beams in an artificial nonlinear material with outstanding photorefractive properties. Nondiffractive beams, which keep their shapes…
Optical activity, the power of a medium to rotate the polarization of a light beam, has contributed significantly to molecular structure assessments in stereochemistry, biomolecular science and crystallography. Thus far, it is commonly…
The interaction of light with objects and media moving at relativistic and superluminal speeds enables unconventional phenomena such as Fresnel drag, Hawking radiation, and light amplification. Synthetic motion, facilitated by modulated…
Optical metamaterials have the potential to control the flow of light at will which may lead to spectacular applications as the perfect lens or the cloaking device. Both of these optical elements require invariant effective material…
Structured light, where complex optical fields are tailored in all their degrees of freedom, has become highly topical of late, advanced by a sophisticated toolkit comprising both linear and nonlinear optics. Removing undesired structure…
Non-diffracting optical beams are essential tools in photonics, enabling robust light transport, super-resolution imaging, and spatiotemporal control. While nonlocal metasurfaces have been proposed for structured-light generation due to…
We propose to combine multiple laser beams into a single diffraction-limited beam by the beam self-focusing (collapse) in the Kerr medium. The beams with the total power above critical are first combined in the near field and then…
Limited-diffraction beams are a class of waves that may be localized in space and time. Theoretically, these beams are propagation invariant and can propagate to an infinite distance without spreading. In practice, when these beams are…