Related papers: Visualizing strongly focused 3D light fields in an…
Key advances in the generation and shaping of spatially structured photonic fields both in the near and far field render possible the control of the duration, the phase, and the polarization state of the field distributions. For instance,…
Electric and magnetic fields are inherently coupled in an electromagnetic wave. However, structured light beams enable their spatial separation. In particular, azimuthally polarized laser beams exhibit a localized magnetic field on-axis…
The absorption of light by materials is one of the most fundamental processes in optics and condensed-matter physics. Here we investigate whether laser light is absorbed by a crystalline material as an electromagnetic wave or as localized…
An azimuthally electric-polarized vector beam (APB), with a polarization vortex, has a salient feature that it contains a magnetic-dominant region within which electric field ideally has a null while longitudinal magnetic field is maximum.…
We report the first observation of free-electron angular momentum wave packets generated by atomic multiphoton ionization with bichromatic three-dimensional (3D) polarization-tailored ultrashort laser fields. These fields, created by the…
We experimentally demonstrate for the first time that a radially polarized field can be focussed to a spot size significantly smaller (0.16(1) lambda^2) than for linear polarization (0.26 lambda^2). The effect of the vector properties of…
Twisted light beams, or optical vortices, have been used to drive the circular motion of microscopic particles in optical tweezers and have been shown to generate vortices in quantum gases. Recent studies have established that electric…
We present a non-perturbative numerical technique for calculating strong light shifts in atoms under the influence of multiple optical fields with arbitrary polarization. We confirm our technique experimentally by performing spectroscopy of…
Optical aberrations have been studied for centuries, placing fundamental limits on the achievable resolution in focusing and imaging. In the context of structured light, the spatial pattern is distorted in amplitude and phase, often arising…
Strong light-matter interactions facilitate not only emerging applications in quantum and non-linear optics but also modifications of materials properties. In particular the latter possibility has spurred the development of advanced…
The well-known mapping between 1D quasiperiodic systems and 2D integer quantum Hall matter can also be applied in the presence of driving. Here we explore the effect of time-varying electric fields on the transport properties and phase…
A systematic analysis of polarization effects in a direct write femtosecond laser 3D lithography is presented. It is newly shown that coupling between linear polarization of the writing light electric field and temperature gradient can be…
The mixed-field orientation of an asymmetric-rotor molecule with its permanent dipole moment non-parallel to the principal axes of polarizability is investigated experimentally and theoretically. We find that for the typical case of a…
We investigate the interaction of highly focused linearly polarized optical beams with a metal knife-edge both theoretically and experimentally. A high numerical aperture objective focusses beams of various wavelengths onto samples of…
Light beams having a vectorial field structure - or polarization - that varies over the transverse profile and a central optical singularity are called vector-vortex (VV) beams and may exhibit specific properties, such as focusing into…
The study of electronic transitions within a molecule connected to the absorption or emission of light is a common task in the process of the design of new materials. The transitions are complex quantum mechanical processes and a detailed…
Vectorial structured light with spatially varying amplitude, phase, and polarization is reshaping many areas of modern optics, including nonlinear optics, as diverse parametric processes can be used to explore interactions between such…
In this paper we show that it is possible to structure the longitudinal polarization component of light. We illustrate our approach by demonstrating linked and knotted longitudinal vortex lines acquired upon non-paraxially propagating a…
We study the angular deflection of the circular polarized components of a linearly polarized probe field in a weakly birefringent atomic system in tripod configuration. A spatially inhomogeneous control field incident obliquely onto an…
It is commonly believed that electromagnetic spectra of atoms and molecules can be fully described by interactions of electric and magnetic multipoles. However, it has recently become clear that interactions between light and matter also…