Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Lluis Torner.
We put forward the concept of reconfigurable structures optically induced by mutually incoherent nondiffracting Bessel beams in Kerr-type nonlinear media. We address collinear couplers and X junctions and show how one can tune the switching properties of such structures by varying the intensity of the Bessel beams.
We consider parametric amplification of two-dimensional spatial soliton oscillations in longitudinally modulated harmonic and Bessel lattices in Kerr-type saturable medium. We show that soliton center oscillations along different axes in two-dimensional lattices are coupled, which gives rise to a number of interesting propagation scenarios including periodic damping and excitation of soliton oscillations along perpendicular axes, selective amplification of soliton oscillations along one transverse axis, and enhancement of soliton spiraling.
We address soliton spiraling in optical lattices induced by multiple coherent Bessel beams and show that the dynamic nature of such lattices makes it possible for them to drag different soliton structures, setting them into rotation. We can control the rotation rate by varying the topological charges of lattice-inducing Bessel beams.
Stable ring-profile vortex solitons, featuring a bright shape, appear to be very rare in nature. However, here we show that they exist and can be made dynamically stable in defocusing cubic nonlinear media with an imprinted Bessel optical lattice. We find the families of vortex solitons and reveal their salient properties, including the conditions required for their stability. We show that the higher the soliton topological charge, the deeper the lattice modulation necessary for stabilization.
We put forward a new method to control the spectra of photon pairs generated in parametric downconversion that allows their spectral properties to be tuned from correlation to anticorrelation, including uncorrelation. The method employs tilted pulses and can be implemented in materials and frequency bands for which conventional methods do not hold.
We report on the existence and stability of multicolor lattice vortex solitons constituted by coupled fundamental frequency and second-harmonic waves in optical lattices in quadratic nonlinear media. It is shown that the solitons are stable almost in the entire domain of their existence, and that the instability domain decreases with the increase of the lattice depth. We also show the generation of the solitons, and the feasibility of the concept of lattice soliton algebra.
We show that suitable photonic metamaterial structures can support lossless surface waves of the form envisaged by Dyakonov. The idea we put forward is based on the birefringent properties of photonic crystals in the long-wavelength limit, and uses the metamaterial anisotropy of the structures to meet the resonance conditions at which Dyakonov surface waves exist. Implementation of this concept can lead to the first experimental observation of Dyakonov waves, and might open the door to the realization of widely tunable sensing devices based on the unique properties of such waves.
We address the properties and dynamical stability of one-dimensional vector lattice solitons in a Kerr-type cubic medium with harmonic transverse modulation of the refractive index. We discovered that unstable families of scalar lattice solitons can be stabilized via cross-phase modulation (XPM) in the vector case. It was found that multihumped vector solitons that are unstable in uniform media where the XPM strength is higher than that of self-phase modulation can also be stabilized by the lattice.
We address azimuthally modulated Bessel optical lattices imprinted in focusing cubic Kerr-type nonlinear media, and reveal that such lattices support different types of stable solitons whose complexity increases with the growth of lattice order. We reveal that the azimuthally modulated lattices cause single solitons launched tangentially to the guiding rings to jump along consecutive sites of the optical lattice. The position of the output channel can be varied by small changes of the launching angle.
We have found various families of two-dimensional spatiotemporal solitons in quadratically nonlinear waveguide arrays. The families of unstaggered odd, even, and twisted stationary solutions are thoroughly characterized and their stability against perturbations is investigated. We show that the twisted and even solitons display instability, while most of the odd solitons show remarkable stability upon evolution.
We show theoretically that a chirped quasi-phase-matching nonlinear crystal structure can significantly enhance the axial resolution in quantum optical coherence tomography by increasing the spectral width of the generated entangled photon pairs. For pulsed pumps we show how the pump-pulse duration affects the maximum resolution attainable.
We address the phenomenon of soliton self-bending in Kerr-type nonlocal nonlinear media with an imprinted transverse periodic modulation of the linear refractive index. We show that the imprinted optical lattice makes possible to control the mobility of soliton by varying the depth and the frequency of the linear refractive index modulation.
We address the dynamics of higher-order solitons in optical lattices, and predict their self-splitting into the set of their single-soliton constituents. The splitting is induced by the potential introduced by the lattice, together with the imprinting of a phase tilt onto the initial multisoliton states. The phenomenon allows the controllable generation of several coherent solitons linked via their Zakharov-Shabat eigenvalues. Application of the scheme to the generation of correlated matter waves in Bose-Einstein condensates is discussed.
We introduce solitons supported by Bessel photonic lattices in cubic nonlinear media. We show that the cylindrical geometry of the lattice, with several concentric rings, affords unique soliton properties and dynamics. In particular, in addition to the lowest-order solitons trapped in the center of the lattice, we find soliton families trapped at different lattice rings. Such solitons can be set into controlled rotation inside each ring, thus featuring novel types of in-ring and inter-ring soliton interactions.
We show that two-dimensional photonic Kerr nonlinear lattices can support stable soliton complexes composed of several solitons packed together with appropriately engineered phases. This may open up new prospects for encoding pixellike images made of robust discrete or lattice solitons.
We elucidate the paraxial orbital angular momentum of entangled photon pairs generated by spontaneous parametric downconversion in different noncollinear geometries in which the entangled photons counterpropagate. We find, in particular, the orbital angular momentum of entangled pairs generated in transverse-emitting configurations, in which none of the known rules for selecting orbital angular momentum holds.
We report an experimental demonstration that shows that the spatial structure carried by engineered coherent superpositions of light beams with orbital angular momentum can be mapped into the nonlinear polarization induced in a cloud of cold cesium atoms. The structure of such polarization was revealed by nearly degenerate four-wave-mixing processes.
We discuss potential applications of multicolor solitons supported by periodic lattices imprinted in quadratic nonlinear media. Such lattice solitons can be packed together with appropriate relative phases to form stable soliton trains that can be treated as bit sequences. We describe controllable splitting of the trains into their soliton constituents and the angle- and power-controlled steering and trapping of solitons moving across the lattice into the desired guiding channel.