Taming the Collapse of Optical Fields

Abstract

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.

The Two-Slit Interference of Vector Optical Fields With Both Radially and Azimuthally Variant States of Polarization

“…In particular, the generation of a vector optical field, focusing characteristics of a vector optical field and its propagation dynamics were demonstrated theoretically and experimentally [13][14][15][16][17]. The nonlinear dynamics of a vector optical field with different SoP distributions have been demonstrated [18,19]. The evanescent wave part and near-field characteristics of a vector optical field have been studied [20].…”

“…In particular, with the modulation of radially variant polarization, the interference patterns in far field have more complex interference fringes of the x and y components. These results provide a new method to further expand the functionality of an optical system and thus can find potential applications in the manipulation of an optical field [1][2][3], nonlinear optics [18,19], imaging [6], and quantum optics [7,23,24].…”

Loss of Polarization in Collapsing Beams of Elliptical Polarization

“…In this case, the loss of polarization effect could lead to spatial de-polarization of the beam due to unequal polarization rotation in each filament. Recent work shows that light with different spatial profiles such as vortex Airy beams and axially asymmetric beams have controllable and designable collapse dynamics that are robust against random noise [58][59][60][61], and it is expected that the loss-of-polarization effect could also occur in such beams. Our work has implications for applications that depend upon the beam polarization being deterministic for collapsing beams traveling over long distances, such as in filamentation for remote sensing and HHG.…”

Femtosecond Laser Processing by Using Patterned Vector Optical Fields

“…As is well known, the field collapse and the multiple filamentation have a common feature, which is its randomness, because they are initialed by the axial symmetry breaking caused by random noise. The axial symmetry breaking of optical field by engineering the spatial SoP structure has been demonstrated to be an extremely effective method for realizing the designable, controllable and robust field collapse and filamentation in nonlinear Kerr medium16. The vector optical fields have been confirmed to fabricate microstructures171819.…”