Related papers: Chiral molecules split light: Reflection and refra…
When a thin structure in which negative refraction occurs (a metallo-dielectric or a photonic crystal) is illuminated by a beam, the reflected and transmitted beam can undergo a large negative lateral shift. This phenomenon can be seen as…
Diffraction is a fundamental property of light propagation. Owing to this phenomenon,light diffracts out in all directions when it passes through a subwavelength slit.This imposes a fundamental limit on the transverse size of a light beam…
Berry phase is revealed for circularly polarized light when it is Bragg-reflected by a chiral liquid crystal medium of the same handedness. By using a chiral nematic layer we demonstrate that if the input plane of the layer is rotated with…
We show that diffraction of electromagnetic radiation (in particular of a visible light) can disappear in propagation through materials with periodically in space modulated refraction index, i.e. photonic crystals. In this way the light…
We examine several retro-reflecting optical elements, each involving two reflections. In the case of a hollow metallic cone having an apex angle of 90\degree, a circularly-polarized incident beam acquires, upon reflection, the opposite spin…
Time-reflection occurs when a wave is propagating in a medium undergoing a large and abrupt change in its properties: the original wave splits into a time-refracted wave and a time-reflected wave, each displaying different features. The…
The phenomenon of molecular optical activity manifests itself as the rotation of the plane of linear polarization when light passes through chiral media. Measurements of optical activity and its wavelength dependence, optical rotatory…
Interferometric tests of a f/1.2 2.5-m diameter liquid mirror show RMS surface deviations about wave/20 and Strehl ratios of order 0.6, showing that it is diffraction limited. The mirror is certainly better than implied by the data because…
We discuss a new technology that promises large inexpensive mirrors. We argue that it should be possible to tilt a rotating viscous liquid by perhaps as much as a few tens of degrees. The tilted liquid parabolic surface is used as the…
In Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 157404 (2003) Yong Zhang et al. study light propagation through an interface between two identical but differently oriented uniaxial crystals. The authors show that the light refraction at the interface at some…
In light refraction between two transparent media, Snell's law describes the relationship between the incident angle and refraction angle. The refractive index is usually determined from Snell's law using the minimum deviation angle through…
We study light scattering by a hedgehog-like and linear disclination topological defects in a nematic liquid crystal by a metric approach. Light propagating near such defects feels an effective metric equivalent to the spatial part of the…
We show theoretically that a directional dipole wave can be perfectly reflected by a single point-like oscillating dipole. Furthermore, we find that in the case of a strongly focused plane wave up to 85 % of the incident light can be…
We present here a general approach to treat reflection and refraction of light of arbitrary polarization from single axis anisotropic plates. We show that reflection from interface inside the anisotropic medium is accompanied by beam…
Chirality is a concept that one object is not superimposable on its mirror image by translation and rotation. In particular, chiral plasmonics have been widely investigated due to their excellent optical chiral properties, and have led to…
Refraction at the interface between two materials is fundamental to the interaction of light with photonic devices and to the propagation of light through the atmosphere at large. Underpinning the traditional rules for the refraction of an…
We experimentally address the wave-vector and polarization dependence of the internal conical refraction phenomenon by demonstrating that an input light beam of elliptical transverse profile refracts into two beams after passing along one…
We study the no reflection condition for a planar boundary between vacuum and an isotropic chiral medium. In general chiral media, elliptically polarized waves incident at a particular angle satisfy the no reflection condition. When the…
An experiment is described that tests theoretical predictions on how C-lines incident obliquely on a surface behave on reflection. C-lines in a polarised wave are the analogues of the optical vortices carried by a complex scalar wave, which…
We establish a general unified formulation which, using the optical theorem of electromagnetic helicity, shows that dichorism is a phenomenon arising in any scattering -or diffraction- process, elastic or not, of chiral electromagnetic…