Field collapse, which occurs in various nonlinear systems, has attracted much attention, owing to its universality, complexity, and applicability. A great challenge and expectation is to achieve the controllable and designable collapsing pattern. Here we predict theoretically and demonstrate experimentally the novel collapsing behaviors of the vector optical fields in a self-focusing Kerr medium. Surprisingly, the results reveal that the collapse of the vector optical field is controllable and designable by engineering the distribution of hybrid states of polarization, and has the robust feature insensitive to the random noise. Our idea has its significance which it opens a new window for manipulating the optical field and the different kinds of field, and then facilitates to push the related researches.

We have developed a modified theory of the spin Hall effect of reflected light from a planar interface composed of two dielectric media and obtain the analytical expression valid for any incident angle including the Brewster’s angle. We improved the experimental method and measured the spin-dependent transverse displacement of reflected light from a planar air-glass interface around the Brewster’s angle. The experimental results are in agreement with the theoretical prediction.

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Optical knots and links have attracted great attention because of their exotic topological characteristics. Recent investigations have shown that the information encoding based on optical knots could possess robust features against external perturbations. However, as a superior coding scheme, it is also necessary to achieve a high capacity, which is hard to be fulfilled by existing knot-carriers owing to the limit number of associated topological invariants. Thus, how to realize the knot-based information coding with a high capacity is a key problem to be solved. Here, we create a type of nested vortex knot, and show that it can be used to fulfill the robust information coding with a high capacity assisted by a large number of intrinsic topological invariants. In experiments, we design and fabricate metasurface holograms to generate light fields sustaining different kinds of nested vortex links. Furthermore, we verify the feasibility of the high-capacity coding scheme based on those topological optical knots. Our work opens another way to realize the robust and high-capacity optical coding, which may have useful impacts on the field of information transfer and storage.

We explore the peculiar interference behaviors of the vector fields in the Young's two-slit configuration. The interference patterns have a chessboard structure in the middle region and depend on the topological charge and the initial phase of the input vector field. The results have potential applications such as characterizing the topological properties of the arbitrary vector fields.

We present a generalized Poincaré sphere (G sphere) and generalized Stokes parameters (G parameters), as a geometric representation, which unifies the descriptors of a variety of vector fields. Unlike the standard Poincaré sphere, the radial dimension in the G sphere is not used to describe the partially polarized field. The G sphere is constructed by extending the basic Jones vector bases to the general vector bases with the continuously changeable ellipticity (spin angular momentum, SAM) and the higher dimensional orbital angular momentum (OAM). The north and south poles of different spherical shells in the G sphere represent the pair of different orthogonal vector basis with different ellipticity (SAM) and the opposite OAM. The higher-order Poincaré spheres are just the two special spherical shells of the G sphere. We present a quite flexible scheme, which can generate all the vector fields described in the G sphere.

Quantum computing has attracted much attention in recent decades, since it is believed to solve certain problems substantially faster than traditional computing methods. Theoretically, such an advance can be obtained by networks of the quantum operators in universal gate sets, one famous example of which is formed by quantum Control‐not gate and single qubit gates. However, realizing a device that performs practical quantum computing is tricky. This is because it requires a scalable qubit system with long coherence time and good controls, which is harsh for most current platforms. Here, it is demonstrated that the information process based on a relatively stable system—classical optical system, can be considered as an analogy of universal quantum computing. By encoding the information via the polarization state of classical beams, the optical computing elements that correspond to the universal gate set are presented and their combination for a general information process is theoretically illustrated. Taking the analogy of two‐qubit processor as an example, it is experimentally verified that the proposal works well. Considering the potential of optical system for reliable and low‐energy‐consuming computation, the results open a new way toward advanced information processing with high quality and efficiency.