Related papers: Non-diffracting meronic spin defects of light

Quantum vortices are the analogue of classical vortices in optics, Bose-Einstein condensates, superfluids and superconductors, where they provide the elementary mode of rotation and orbital angular momentum. While they mediate important…

Optical vortices are phase singularities nested in electromagnetic waves that constitute a fascinating source of phenomena in the physics of light and display deep similarities to their close relatives, quantized vortices in superfluids and…

A new type of long-lived solitary structures for paraxial optics with two circular polarizations of light in a homogeneous defocusing Kerr medium with an anomalous group velocity dispersion has been revealed numerically in the coupled…

Subwavelength plasmonic waveguides show the unique ability of strongly localizing (down to the nanoscale) and guiding light. These structures are intrinsically two-way optical communication channels, providing two opposite light propagation…

It has been recently recognized that in addition to the conventional longitudinal angular momentum, structured (inhomogeneous) optical fields exhibit helicity-independent transverse spin angular momentum (SAM) and an unusual spin (circular…

Singular optics aims to understand and manipulate light's topological defects, pioneered by the discovery that phase vortex lines, strands of destructive interference, naturally occur in scalar wave fields. Monochromatic electromagnetic…

As the size of an optical vortex knot, imprinted in a coherent light beam, is decreased, nonparaxial effects alter the structure of the knotted optical singularity. For knot structures approaching the scale of wavelength, longitudinal…

Light scattering in random media is usually considered within the framework of the three-dimensional Anderson universality class, with modifications for the vector nature of electromagnetic waves. We propose that the linear dispersiveness…

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…

Using full-wave numerical simulations and analytical multipole expansions we investigated the properties of real-space polarization singularities that emerge in light scattering by subwavelength particles. We considered spherical and torus…

Electromagnetic spins, including longitudinal and transverse ones, have been playing important roles in light-matter interactions. Here, we formulate a unified equation to uncover the physical origins and topological properties of…

Topological insulators are candidates to open up a novel route in spin based electronics. Different to traditional ferromagnetic materials, where the carrier spin-polarization and magnetization are based on the exchange interaction, the…

The photon spin is an important resource for quantum information processing as is the electron spin in spintronics. However, for subwavelength confined optical excitations, polarization as a global property of a mode cannot be defined.…

The interaction of optical vortices (or phase singularities, screw dislocations) with ordinary matter is treated with simple approach. Using total internal reflection phenomenon and superposition of four plane waves incident on a material…

We theoretically study spin and charge transport induced by a twisted light beam irradiated on a disordered surface of a doped three dimensional topological insulator (TI). We find that various types of spin vortices are imprinted on the…

Tightly focused light beams can exhibit electric fields spinning around any axis including the one transverse to the beams' propagation direction. At certain focal positions, the corresponding local polarization ellipse can degenerate into…

We consider weak topological insulators with a twofold rotation symmetry around the dark direction, and show that these systems can be endowed with the topological crystalline structure of a higher-order topological insulator protected by…

Photonic crystal topological insulators host protected states at their edges. In the band structure these edge states appear as continuous bands crossing the photonic band gap. They allow light to propagate unidirectionally and without…

A major challenge in polariton fluids is achieving deterministic control over the spin texture of the macroscopic condensate wavefunction, which dictates the nucleation and dynamics of topological excitations, such as vortices, solitons,…

In a galactic halo like the Milky Way, bosonic dark matter particles lighter than about $30$ eV have a de Broglie wavelength larger than the average inter-particle separation and are therefore well described as a set of classical waves.…