Related papers: Creating Light-Made Waveguides with Structured Opt…
We show that the recently demonstrated technique for generating stationary pulses of light [Nature {\bf 426}, 638 (2003)] can be extended to localize optical pulses in all three spatial dimensions in a resonant atomic medium. This method…
A nonlinear self-focusing material can amplify random small-amplitude phase modulations present in an optical beam, leading to the formation of amplitude singularities commonly referred to as optical caustics. By imposing polarization…
Optical trapping describes the interaction between light and matter to manipulate micro-objects through momentum transfer. In the case of 3D trapping with a single beam, this is termed optical tweezers. Optical tweezers are a powerful and…
We overview the properties of nonlinear guided waves and (bright and dark) spatial optical solitons in a periodic medium created by a sequence of linear and nonlinear layers. First, we consider a single layer with a cubic nonlinear response…
Optical communication is an integral part of the modern economy, having all but replaced electronic communication systems. Future growth in bandwidth appears to be on the horizon using structured light, encoding information into the spatial…
Spontaneous symmetry breaking and formation of self-organized structures in nonlinear systems are intriguing and important phenomena in nature. Advancing such research to new nonlinear optical regimes is of much interest for both…
Nonlinear optics is crucial for shaping the spatial structure of shortwave light and its interactions with matter, but achieving this through simple harmonic generation with a single pump is challenging. This study demonstrates nonlinear…
We consider combining of multiple laser beams into a single near diffraction-limited beam by beam self-focusing (collapse) in a Kerr medium. The beams with the total power above critical are combined in the near field and then propagated in…
Several applications, such as optical tweezers and atom guiding, benefit from techniques that allow the engineering of optical fields' spatial profiles, in particular their longitudinal intensity patterns. In cylindrical coordinates,…
Tailoring the degrees of freedom (DoF) of light for a desired purpose, so-called structured light, has delivered numerous advances over the past decade, ranging from communications and quantum cryptography to optical trapping, and…
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…
We develop a self-consistent method to study the optical response of metallic gratings with nonlinear media embedded within their subwavelength slits. An optical Kerr nonlinearity is considered. Due to the large E-fields associated with the…
Materials of which the optical response is determined by their structure are of much interest both for their fundamental properties and applications. Examples range from simple gratings to photonic crystals. Obtaining control over the…
Bending of a shape-invariant optical beam is achieved so far along parabolic or circular curves. Borrowing ideas used in nonlinear optical communication, we propose such a bending along any preassigned curve or surface, controlled by the…
A system of equations has been proposed for a monochromatic weakly nonlinear light wave in a Kerr medium. This system is equivalent up to the third order in electric field to the known equation $\mbox{curl}\,\mbox{curl}\, {\bf E}=k_0^2[{\bf…
We analyze both theoretically and by means of numerical simulations the phenomena of filamentation and dynamical formation of self-guided nonlinear waves in media featuring competing cubic and quintic nonlinearities. We provide a…
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…
Conventional caustic methods in real or Fourier space produced accelerating optical beams only with convex trajectories. We develop a superposition caustic method capable of winding light beams along non-convex trajectories. We ascertain…
Multimode fiber systems are desirable for industrial and scientific applications. As an interesting effect for the laser beam propagation in a multimode fiber, nonlinear Kerr beam cleanup has attracted considerable research interest due to…
Pushing the limits of precision and reproducibility in ultrafast laser-based nanostructuring requires detailed control over the properties of the illumination. Most traditional methods of laser-based manufacturing rely on the simplicity of…