A diffractive mechanism of focusing

Case, William B.; Sadurní, E.; Schleich, Wolfgang P.

doi:10.1364/oe.20.027253

Cited by 23 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…8c is interesting since it represents the moment of focusing. Indeed, by this time all negative contributions of W have moved away 5 from the positive peak centered at the x-axis but now subtract from its wings. This fact stands out more clearly in the position distribution shown in Fig.…”

Section: General Casementioning

confidence: 95%

“…Recently, the diffraction in time of the double-shutter problem was analyzed [5]. An initially confined rectangular wave packet in one dimension is suddenly released and evolves in time.…”

Section: Diffraction In Timementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In quantum matter waves, the Moshinsky shutter or the sudden release of rectangular wave packet is also an example of sharp boundaries. The effects arising in the diffraction patterns due to non-sharp boundaries have been investigated recently [5,50,[70][71][72][73].…”

Section: Diffraction In Timementioning

confidence: 99%

“…For this purpose we first express the time-dependent wave function in terms of a Fresnel integral, and then derive analytic approximations for the wave function as well as the probability density. To bring out most clearly the focusing effect we finally calculate the Gaussian width [5] of the wave packet and demonstrate that it exhibits a clear minimum at the time of the focusing.…”

Section: Wave Function Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…manifests itself in the time-dependent probability density as well as the Gaussian width [5] of the wave packet. For this purpose we derive exact as well as approximate analytical expressions for the time-dependent probability amplitude and density.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Single-slit focusing and its representations

et al. 2017

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theory of light. Three years later he participated with his Mémoire sur la Diffraction de la Lumière in the Grand Prix of the French Academy of Sciences [2]. It was on this occasion that Siméon Poisson predicted that an opaque disc illuminated by parallel light would create a bright spot in the center of a shadow. This phenomenon was experimentally confirmed by Francois Arago and led to the victory of the wave over the particle theory. In the present article we discuss an effect related to the Poisson spot which is the onedimensional analogue of the camera obscura [3,4].Indeed, we have recently found [5] that a rectangular matter wave packet which undergoes free time evolution according to the Schrödinger equation focuses before it spreads. This phenomenon has been confirmed for light [6], water and surface plasmon waves [7]. In the present article we illustrate this effect in Wigner phase space and verify it using classical light in real space.Our article is organized as follows: in Sect. 2 we first give a brief history of the diffraction of waves, and then review several focusing effects especially those associated with the phenomenon of diffraction in time introduced in Moshinsky [8].We dedicate Sect. 3 to the discussion of the focusing of a rectangular wave packet from the point of view of the timedependent wave function. In particular, we show this effect Abstract We illustrate the phenomenon of the focusing of a freely propagating rectangular wave packet using three different tools: (1) the time-dependent wave function in position space, (2) the Wigner phase-space approach, and (3) an experiment using laser light.

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Section: General Casementioning

confidence: 95%

“…Recently, the diffraction in time of the double-shutter problem was analyzed [5]. An initially confined rectangular wave packet in one dimension is suddenly released and evolves in time.…”

Section: Diffraction In Timementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Diffraction In Timementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Wave Function Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Single-slit focusing and its representations

et al. 2017

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On‐Demand Subwavelength‐Scale Light Sculpting Using Nanometric Holograms

Zhang,

Hu,

Zhang

et al. 2023

Laser & Photonics Reviews

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Spatially or temporally structured light has attracted considerable attention for its intriguing beam characteristics, which have found extensive applications in classical and quantum optics. Extending structured light from macroscale and microscale to nanometricscale brings more prospects both for fundamental and applied science. However, sculpting light at the subwavelength scale remains a challenge since its transverse structure is fragile in the nanometric scale. Here a novelholography for arbitrary light sculpting at the subwavelength scale is demonstrated. A wave phenomenon of diffractive focusing from an amplitude‐only nanometric (50‐nm‐thick) film is introduced, and use of the induced high‐spatial‐frequency waves as carriers to encode information of an object is considered. Using this technique, nanometric holograms are designed and fabricated for generating the well‐defined eigen modes including the zero‐order Bessel beam, vortex beam, vector beam, Airy beam, as well as an arbitrary light pattern, with feature sizes on the deep‐subwavelength scale. The broadband performance of the hologram is examined, and a white‐light nondiffracting beam at the deep‐subwavelength scale is realized. This demonstration paves a way toward on‐demand light sculpting at the nanometric scale, which may find applications such as optical super‐resolution imaging, nanoparticle manipulation, and precise measurements.

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