Related papers: Twisted Light and the mirage effect
Light transfer in gradient-index media generally follows curved ray trajectories, which will cause light beam to converge or diverge during transfer and induce the rotation of polarization ellipse even when the medium is transparent.…
When an optical beam propagates through a turbulent medium such as the atmosphere or ocean, the beam will become distorted. It is then natural to seek the best or optimal beam that is distorted least, under some metric such as intensity or…
We investigate, both theoretically and experimentally, the phenomenon of polarization rotation of a weak, linearly-polarized optical (probe) field in an atomic system with multiple three-level electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT)…
In an optical experiment, we report a wave turbulence regime that, starting with weakly nonlinear waves with randomized phases, shows an inverse cascade of photons towards the lowest wavenumbers. We show that the cascade is induced by a…
The variation of photonic orbital angular momentum at Compton scattering is characterized. We determine scattering matrix of a twisted light based on the fundamental conservation of orbital angular momenta. Numerical values for two…
We have experimentally studied the degradation of mode purity for light beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) propagating through simulated atmospheric turbulence. The turbulence is modeled as a randomly varying phase aberration,…
Light possesses both spin and orbital angular momentum (AM). While spin AM is determined by helicity of circular-polarization, orbital AM is characterized by topological charge of vortex beam. Interaction of AM with optical beam orbit leads…
Optical angular momentum (OAM) in light beams is manifested as the two-dimensional spatial distribution of its complex amplitude, necessitating a 2D detector for its measurement. Here we present a novel speckle-based machine learning…
A simple experiment is presented that enables qualitative and quantitative measurement of the extraordinary refractive index direction dependency in an uniaxial nematic liquid crystal. Three liquid crystaline cells were designed in which…
We describe a novel phenomenon occurring when a polarized Gaussian beam of light is observed in a Cartesian reference frame whose axes are not parallel to the direction of propagation of the beam. Such phenomenon amounts to an intriguing…
We report on experimentally observed addition, subtraction and cancellation of orbital angular momentum (OAM) in the process of parametric four-wave mixing that results in frequency up- and down-converted emission in Rb vapour. Specific…
Propagation of light through a thin flat metallic screen containing a hole of twisted shape is sensitive to whether the incident wave is left or right circularly polarized. The transmitted light accrues a component with handedness opposite…
Chirality is a fundamental concept in physics that underpins various phenomena in nonlinear optics, quantum physics, and topological photonics. Although the spin of a photon naturally brings chirality, orbital angular momentum can also…
When a thin structure in which negative refraction occurs (a metallo-dielectric or a photonic crystal) is illuminated by a beam, the reflected and transmitted beam can undergo a large negative lateral shift. This phenomenon can be seen as…
Spin orbit interaction and the resulting Spin Hall effect of light are under recent intensive investigations because of their fundamental nature and potential applications. Here, we report an extraordinary spin specific beam shift of light…
The appearance of unconventional vacuum properties in intense fields has long been an active field of research. In this paper the vacuum polarization effect is investigated via a pump probe scheme of a probe light propagating in the vacuum…
We develop a free-carrier theory of the optical absorption of light carrying orbital angular momentum (twisted light) by bulk semiconductors. We obtain the optical transition matrix elements for Bessel-mode twisted light and use them to…
Desert mirages were simulated in the laboratory by heating a flat surface of sand. This showed that a boundary layer of air, of only a few millimeters immediately covering a heated surface has nearly the same thickness over a wide range of…
Breaking the diffraction limit and focusing laser beams to subwavelength scale are becoming possible with the help of recent developments in plasmonics. Such subwavelength focusing bridges different length scales of laser beams and matter.…
Recently, we showed experimentally that light carrying orbital angular momentum experiences a slight subluminality under free-space propagation [1]. We thank Saari [2] for pointing out an apparent discrepancy between our theoretical results…