Related papers: Carving light beams
We introduce a class of unidirectional lasing modes associated with the frozen mode regime of non-reciprocal slow-wave structures. Such asymmetric modes can only exist in cavities with broken time-reversal and space inversion symmetries.…
Subwavelength aperture arrays in thin metal films can enable enhanced transmission of light and matter (atom) waves. The phenomenon relies on resonant excitation and interference of the plasmon or matter waves on the metal surface. We show…
Following the familiar analogy between the optical paraxial wave equation and the Schr\"odinger equation, we derive the optimal, real-valued wave function for focusing in one and two space dimensions without the use of any phase component.…
A unidirectional imager would only permit image formation along one direction, from an input field-of-view (FOV) A to an output FOV B, and in the reverse path, the image formation would be blocked. Here, we report the first demonstration of…
Structured optical waveforms are emerging as powerful control fields for the next generation of complex photonic and electromagnetic systems, where the temporal structure of light can determine the ultimate performance of scientific…
Wavefront shaping is a powerful technique that can be used to focus light through scattering media, which can be important for imaging through scattering samples such as tissue. The method is based on the assumption that the field at the…
Under the introduction of any interface in its trajectory, an optical beam experiences polarization-dependent deflections in the longitudinal and transverse directions with respect to the plane of incidence. The physics of such optical beam…
The problem of slowing down light by orders of magnitude has been extensively discussed in the literature. Such a possibility can be useful in a variety of optical and microwave applications. Many qualitatively different approaches have…
The guided transmission of optical waves is critical for light-based applications in modern communication, information processing, and energy generation systems. Traditionally, guiding light waves in structures like optical fibres is…
We predict theoretically the nondiffractive propagation of sonic waves in periodic acoustic media (sonic crystals), by expansion into a set of plane waves (Bloch mode expansion), and by finite difference time domain calculations of finite…
Spatially splitting nonclassical light beams is in principle prohibited due to noise contamination during beam splitting. We propose a platform based on thermal motion of atoms to realize spatial multiplexing of squeezed light. Light…
We study a pattern forming instability in a laser driven optically thick cloud of cold two-level atoms with a planar feedback mirror. A theoretical model is developed, enabling a full analysis of transverse patterns in a medium with…
The propagation of matter waves in curved geometry is relevant for electrons in nano-wires, solid-state physics structures and atomtronics. Curvature effects are usually addressed within the adiabatic limit and treated via an effective…
We show how spatial dispersion can be used as a mechanism to customize the longitudinal profiles of electric fields inside modulated wire media, using a fast and remarkably accurate 1D inhomogeneous model. This customization gives fine…
The study of transverse optical pattern formation has been studied extensively in nonlinear optics, with a recent experimental interest in studying the phenomenon using cold atoms, which can undergo real-space self-organization. Here, we…
Diffractive optical elements that divide an input beam into a set of replicas are used in many optical applications ranging from image processing to communications. Their design requires time-consuming optimization processes, which, for a…
Light and sound waves have the fascinating property that they can move objects through the transfer of linear or angular momentum. This ability has led to the development of optical and acoustic tweezers, with applications ranging from…
Metasurfaces are ultra-thin optical elements composed of engineered sub-wavelength structures that enable precise control of light. Their inverse design - determining a geometry that yields a desired optical response - is challenging due to…
We study experimentally the writing of one- and two-dimensional photorefractive lattices, focusing on the often overlooked transient regime. Our measurements agree well with theory, in particular concerning the ratio of the drift to…
In this paper, we develop a theoretical analysis to efficiently handle superpositions of waves with concentrated wavevector and frequency spectra, allowing an easy analytical description of fields with interesting transverse profiles.…