We report the first experimental demonstration of combined spatial and temporal control of light trajectories through opaque media. This control is achieved by solely manipulating spatial degrees of freedom of the incident wavefront. As an application, we demonstrate that the present approach is capable to form bandwidth-limited ultrashort pulses from the otherwise randomly transmitted light with a controllable interaction time of the pulses with the medium. Our approach provides a new tool for fundamental studies of light propagation in complex media and has potential for applications for coherent control, sensing and imaging in nano-and biophotonics.
Topological defects play a key role in a variety of physical systems, ranging from high-energy to solid-state physics. A skyrmion is a type of topological defect that has shown promise for applications in the fields of magnetic storage and spintronics. We show that optical skyrmion lattices can be generated using evanescent electromagnetic fields and demonstrate this using surface plasmon polaritons, imaged by phase-resolved near-field optical microscopy. We show how the optical skyrmion lattice exhibits robustness to imperfections while the topological domain walls in the lattice can be continuously tuned, changing the spatial structure of the skyrmions from bubble type to Néel type. Extending the generation of skyrmions to photonic systems provides various possibilities for applications in optical information processing, transfer, and storage.
We designed and realized a metasurface (manipulating the local geometry) spiral (manipulating the global geometry) plasmonic lens, which fundamentally overcomes the multiple efficiency and functionality challenges of conventional in-plane plasmonic lenses. The combination of spirality and metasurface achieves much more efficient and uniform linear-polarization-independent plasmonic focusing. As for functionality, under matched circularly polarized illumination the lens directs all of the power coupled to surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) into the focal spot, while the orthogonal polarization excites only diverging SPPs that do not penetrate the interior of the lens, achieving 2 orders of magnitude intensity contrast throughout the entire area of the lens. This optimal functional focusing is clearly demonstrated by near-field optical microscopy measurements that are in excellent agreement with simulations and are supported by a detailed theoretical interpretation of the underlying mechanisms. Our results advance the field of plasmonics toward functional detection and the employment of SPPs in smart pixels, near-field microscopy, lithography, and particle manipulation.
We experimentally demonstrate spatiotemporal focusing of light on single nanocrystals embedded inside a strongly scattering medium. Our approach is based on spatial wave front shaping of short pulses, using second harmonic generation inside the target nanocrystals as the feedback signal. We successfully develop a model both for the achieved pulse duration as well as the observed enhancement of the feedback signal. The approach enables exciting opportunities for studies of light propagation in the presence of strong scattering as well as for applications in imaging, micro- and nanomanipulation, coherent control and spectroscopy in complex media.
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