Related papers: Optical torque controlled by elliptical polarizati…
A circularly polarized rotationally symmetric paraxial laser beams carries hbar angular momentum per photon as spin. Focussing the beam with a rotationally symmetric lens cannot change this angular momentum flux, yet the focussed beam must…
We report on the observation and measurement of the transfer of transverse angular momentum to birefringent particles several wavelengths in size. A trapped birefringent particle is much larger than the nano-particles systems for which…
High-index spherical nanoparticles with low material losses support sharp high-Q electric and magnetic resonances and exhibit a number of interesting optical phenomena. Developments in fabrication techniques have enabled the further study…
When polarized light is absorbed by an atom, the excited atomic system carries information about the initial polarization of light. For the light that carries an orbital angular momentum, or the twisted light, the polarization states are…
The optical binding of many particles has great potential to achieve the wide-area formation of a "crystal" of small materials. Unlike conventional optical binding, where the whole assembly of targeted particles is irradiated with light, if…
A precise, accurate, and relatively straightforward in-situ method to measure and control the ellipticity of light resonantly interacting with an atomic vapor is described. The technique can be used to minimize vector light shifts. The…
We investigate theoretically the ability of an optical centrifuge - a laser pulse whose linear polarization is rotating at an accelerated rate, to control molecular rotation in the regime when the rigid-rotor approximation breaks down due…
We propose a rigorous theory for the optical trapping by optical vortices, which is emerging as an important tool to trap mesoscopic particles. The common perception is that the trapping is solely due to the gradient force, and may be…
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 have investigated the tunable lateral shift and polarization beam splitting of the transmitted light beam through electro-optic crystals, based on the Pockels effect. The positive and negative lateral shifts could be easily controlled by…
Structured beams of light can move small objects in surprising ways. Particularly striking examples include observations of polarization-dependent forces acting on optically isotropic objects and tractor beams that can pull objects opposite…
The polarisation of light is a powerful and widely used degree of freedom to encode information, both in classical and quantum applications. In particular, quantum information technologies based on photons are being revolutionised by the…
In light beams with circular or elliptic polarization, the transverse energy flow consists of the "spin" and "orbital" parts. Both of them can induce the orbital motion of microparticles suspended within the field of a light beam, and this…
The edge diffraction of a homogeneously polarized light beam is studied theoretically based on the paraxial optics and Fresnel-Kirchhoff approximation, and the dependence of the diffracted beam pattern of the incident beam polarization is…
The optical trapping of polymeric nanofibers and the characterization of the rotational dynamics are reported. A strategy to apply a torque to a polymer nanofiber, by tilting the trapped fibers using a symmetrical linear polarized Gaussian…
Non-invasive optical manipulation of particles has emerged as a powerful and versatile tool for biological study and nanotechnology. In particular, trapping and rotation of cells, cell nuclei and sub-micron particles enables unique…
Plasmonic metamaterials provide a flexible platform for light manipulation and polarisation management, thanks to their engineered optical properties with exotic dispersion regimes. Here, we exploit the enhanced spin-orbit coupling induced…
We discuss the detection of an anisotropic particle trapped by an elliptically polarized focused Gaussian laser beam. We obtain the full rotational and translational dynamics, as well as, the measured photo-current in a general-dyne…
Photonic devices exhibiting all-optically reconfigurable polarization dependence with a large dynamic range would be highly attractive for active polarization control. Here, we report that strongly polarization-selective nonlinear…
We introduce the concept of resonant optical torque that allows enhancing substantially a transfer of optical angular momentum (AM) of light to a subwavelength particle. We consider high-index cylindrical dielectric nanoparticles supporting…