Fractals, complex shapes with structure at multiple scales, have long been observed in Nature: as symmetric fractals in plants and sea shells, and as statistical fractals in clouds, mountains and coastlines. With their highly polished spherical mirrors, laser resonators are almost the precise opposite of Nature, and so it came as a surprise when, in 1998, transverse intensity cross-sections of the eigenmodes of unstable canonical resonators were predicted to be fractals [Karman et al., Nature 402, 138 (1999)]. Experimental verification has so far remained elusive. Here we observe a variety of fractal shapes in transverse intensity cross-sections through the lowest-loss eigenmodes of unstable canonical laser resonators, thereby demonstrating the controlled generation of fractal light inside a laser cavity. We also advance the existing theory of fractal laser modes, first by predicting 3D self-similar fractal structure around the centre of the magnified self-conjugate plane, second by showing, quantitatively, that intensity cross-sections are most self-similar in the magnified self-conjugate plane. Our work offers a significant advance in the understanding of a fundamental symmetry of Nature as found in lasers.
We investigate filamentation of a cw laser beam in soft matter such as colloidal suspensions and fractal gels. The process, driven by electrostriction, is strongly affected by material properties, which are taken into account via the static structure factor, and have impact on the statistics of the light filaments.
Coherent beam combination (CBC) of fiber lasers holds promise for achieving high brightness laser systems, which have given rise to widespread applications such as particle accelerator, space debris removal, and industrial fabrication. The emitting laser array of CBC systems offers intriguing features in terms of agile beam steering, flexible beam shaping, and high scalability for output power and array elements. However, the theoretical model of the laser array in CBC systems is less well explored beyond the routine angular-spectrum method, where methods for optimizing the laser array configu…
A Laser-stimulated synthesis of large silver nanoaggregates consisting of hundreds to thousands of nanoparticles is investigated. It is shown that the morphology of the synthesized nanostructures can be controlled with light and monitored via the evolution of the colloid absorption spectra. A solution method is demonstrated that enables production of a bulk amount of metal nanoaggregates, which are of paramount importance for subwavelength concentration and dramatic enhancement of the electromagnetically-induced processes at the nanoscale.
Bacteria light harvesters are interpreted as Vicsek fractal, based upon their morphology, even though such fractals contain only one, or perhaps two, generations. After using fractal dimensions to describe the geometry, we progress to use connectivity matrices to make an improved description of the light harvesters and make connections with our previous studies.
Optical scattering strength of fractal optical disordered media with varying fractal dimension is reported. The diffusion limited aggregation (DLA) technique is used to generate fractal samples in 2D and 3D, and fractal dimensions are calculated using the box-counting method. The degree of structural disorder of these samples are calculated using their light localization strength, using the inverse participation ratio (IPR) analyses of the optical eigenfunctions. Results show non-monotonous behavior of the disorder-induced scattering strength with the fractal dimension, attributed to the compe…
Thin film solar cells have been attractive for decades in advanced green technology platforms due to its possibilities to be integrated with buildings and on-chip applications. However, the bottleneck issues involved to consider the current solar cells as a major electricity source includes the lower efficiencies and cost-effectiveness. We numerically demonstrate the concept of the absorption enhancement in thin-film amorphous silicon solar cells using the laser beam-induced graphene material based on the insensitive polarization space-filling fractal design as transparent conductive electrode…
Codes were written to simulate the propagation of monochromatic light through a bare optical resonator, using a computational Fourier method to solve the Huygens-Fresnel integral. This was used, in the Fox-Li method, to find the lowest-loss eigenmodes of arbitrary cavity designs. An implicit shift `hopping' method was employed to allow a series of increasingly higher-loss eigenmodes to be found, limited in number by computational time. Codes were confirmed in their accuracy against the literature, and were used to investigate a number of different cavity configurations. In addition to confirmi…
We find that in nonhermitian PT-symmetric systems (as realized in resonators with balanced absorption and amplification), a mechanism based on quantum-to-classical correspondence reduces the occurrence of strongly amplified states. The reduction arises from semiclassically emerging hierarchical phase-space structures that are associated with the coupling of the amplifying and absorbing regions (forward and backward-trapped sets and their complements), and amounts to a generalization of the fractal Weyl law, earlier proposed for ballistically open systems. In the context of the recently introdu…
In this paper, a plasmonic absorber consisting of a metal-dielectric-metal stack with a top layer of Sierpinski nanocarpet is theoretically investigated. Such compact absorber depicts broadband angle-independent behavior over a wide optical wavelength range ($400-700$ nm) and a broad range of angles of light incidence ($0-80^{\circ}$). Including several feature sizes, such fractal-like structure shows widely strong extinction ($85-99$%) response for either transverse electric or magnetic polarization states under normal incidence. Underlying mechanisms of absorbance due to excited surface plas…
Disordered optical media are an emerging class of materials capable of strongly scattering light. Their study is relevant to investigate transport phenomena and for applications in imaging, sensing and energy storage. While such materials can be used to generate coherent light, their directional emission is typically hampered by their very multiple scattering nature. Here, we tune the out-of-plane directionality of coherent Raman light scattered by a fractal network of silicon nanowires. By visualizing Rayleigh scattering, photoluminescence and weakly localized Raman light from the random netw…
We study the light scattered from randomly rough, one-dimensional self-affine fractal silver surfaces with nanoscale lower cutoff, illuminated by s- or p-polarized Gaussian beams a few microns wide. By means of rigorous numerical calculations based on the Green theorem integral equation formulation, we obtain both the far- and near-field scattered intensities. The influence of diminishing the fractal lower scale cutoff (from below a hundred, down to a few nanometers) is analyzed in the case of both single realizations and ensemble average magnitudes. For s polarization, variations are small in…
We use a spatially resolved cavity ring-down technique to show that the 2D eigenmode of an unstable optical cavity has a fractal pattern, i.e. it looks the same at different length scales. In agreement with theory, we find that this pattern has the maximum conceivable roughness, i.e., its fractal dimension is 3.01 plus\minus 0.04. This insight in the nature of unstable cavity eigenmodes may lead to better understanding of wave dynamics in open systems, for both light and matter waves.
The ability to transmit light through an array of closely packed waveguides while minimizing interwaveguide coupling has important implications for fields such as discrete imaging and telecommunications. Proposals for achieving these effects have leveraged phenomena ranging from Floquet-induced flat bands to Anderson localization. Here we demonstrate that, for strongly detuned waveguides, optimal localization is achieved not by disorder but by fractal potentials. We further show that, in both 1D and 2D, these structures possess a localization-delocalization phase transition.
Many natural patterns and shapes, such as meandering coastlines, clouds, or turbulent flows, exhibit a characteristic complexity mathematically described by fractal geometry. In recent years, the engineering of self-similar structures in photonics and nano-optics technology enabled the manipulation of light states beyond periodic or disordered systems, adding novel functionalities to complex optical media with applications to nano-devices and metamaterials. Here, we extend the reach of fractal "photonics" by experimentally demonstrating multifractality of light in engineered arrays of dielectr…
The eigenmodes of unstable canonical optical resonators possess fractal structure in their transverse intensity cross-sections [Karman et al., Nature 402, 138 (1999)]. In one particular plane, the magnified self-conjugate plane, this structure can be explained in terms of a combination of imaging and diffraction [Courtial and Padgett, PRL 85, 5320 (2000)]. Here we show that this combination of imaging and diffraction simultaneously occurs in the longitudinal direction, resulting in three-dimensional self-similar fractal structure around the centre of the magnified self-conjugate plane.
Speckle is a wave interference phenomenon that has been studied in various fields, including optics, hydrodynamics and acoustics. Speckle patterns contain spectral information of the interfering waves, and of the scattering medium that generates the pattern. Here we study experimentally the speckle patterns generated by the light emitted by two types of semiconductor lasers: conventional laser diodes, where we induce low-coherence emission by optical feedback or by pump current modulation, and coupled nanolasers. In both cases we analyze the intensity statistics of the respective speckle patte…
The threshold properties of photonic crystal quantum dot lasers operating in the slow-light regime are investigated experimentally and theoretically. Measurements show that, in contrast to conventional lasers, the threshold gain attains a minimum value for a specific cavity length. The experimental results are explained by an analytical theory for the laser threshold that takes into account the effects of slow-light and random disorder due to unavoidable fabrication imperfections. Longer lasers are found to operate deeper into the slow-light region, leading to a trade-off between slow-light in…
One notable feature of dye doped cholesteric liquid crystal is the variation of pitch and refractive index as the incidence angle of the pumping light shifts. Based on this feature, this paper studies the effects of pumping light's incidence angle on emission properties of the dye doped cholesteric liquid crystal tunable laser. First, we investigated the relationship among the concentration of chiral reagent, the incidence angle of the pumping light, and the pitch of liquid-crystal display (LCD); then we made a tunable-wavelength laser and pumped the prepared sample with 532nm laser outputted …
We report, for what we believe to be the first time, on the generation of remote self-seeding laser amplification by using only one 800 nm Ti:Sapphire femtosecond laser pulse. The laser pulse (~ 40 fs) is first used to generate a filament either in pure nitrogen or in ambient air in which population inversion between ground and excited states of nitrogen molecular ions is realized. Self-induced white light inside the filament is then serving as the seed to be amplified. The self-induced narrow-band laser at 428 nm has a pulse duration of ~2.6 ps with perfect linear polarization property. This …
A simple, robust, and efficient method to produce either radially or azimuthally polarized output beam from a fiber laser is presented. Experimental results reveal that polarization purity of 90% or better can be obtained.
In this comment on "How many principles does it take to change a light bulb ... into a laser?" by Howard M. Wiseman, Physica Scripta 91 (3), 033001 (2016) I am analyzing this extremely nicely formulated question in the framework of the Hanbury-Brown & Twiss experiment thus celebrating also its 60th anniversary. I am giving a straightforward, concise and unique answer on this question, emphasizing that the intensity correlations or the photon statistics make the difference between a light bulb and a laser.
The results on amplifying either radially or azimuthally polarized light with a fiber amplifier are presented. Experimental results reveal that more than 85% polarization purity can be retained at the output even with 40dB amplification, and that efficient conversion of the amplified light to linear polarization can be obtained.
We show that, in multimode Raman lasers, cascaded light scattering (CLS) not only extends the optical frequency range, but could also modulate the laser dynamics. The origin of this phenomenon is based on the fact that many Raman lasing modes are directly correlated through CLS. The coupled-mode equations only describe single-mode cascaded Raman lasers and are insufficient for describing the multimode case. In this work, we introduce additional terms to account for intermodal interaction and, thence, reveal the physical mechanism behind the mode-switching phenomenon. Additionally, mode-switchi…
A new mechanism for the THz light amplification is identified ina non-resonant Raman scattering between the THz light and a visible light lasers. The non-resonant scattering normally does not exchange the energy between E \&M fields, but the presence of the plasma density gradientcreates an condition in which a visible light laser could transfer its energy into a tera-hertz (THz) light via the laser-plasma interaction. The gain per length could reach 100 (1000) per centimeter for the THz light (far infra-red light) amplification.
By generalizing the well known results for reflection and refraction of plane waves at the vacuum-medium interface to Gaussian light beams, we obtain analytic formulas for reflection and refraction of the TM and TE laser light pulses. This enables us to give a possible explanation why no reflection was observed in light pulse photographs in some vicinity of the air-resin interface, given in L. Gao, J. Liang, C. Li, and L. V. Wang, Nature 516 (2014) 74-77. We suggest how to modify the experimental setup so as to observe the reflected pulse.
In the past, a number of heat engine models have been devised to apply the principles of thermodynamics to a laser. The best one known is the model using a negative temperature to describe population inversion. In this paper, we present a new temperature scale not based on reservoir temperatures. This is realized by revealing a formal mathematical similarity between the expressions for the optimum power generated by an endoreversible heat engine and the optimum output-coupled power from a three-level laser resonator. As a consequence, the theory of endoreversibility can be applied to enable a …
Lasers make possible the production and ultimate control of electromagnetic fields in terms of spectral purity, spatial confinement down to micrometer scale, duration down to a single cycle in the femtosecond domain or shorter and electromagnetic field strengths - corresponding to the highest intensities achieved by mankind in the lab. Ultra-intense laser facilities are pushing the limits of the achievable pulse intensity, hence the coined term extreme light. They make possible fundamental and applied investigations in physics and material science with emergent societal impact. Extreme Light I…
Transport in complex systems is characterized by a fractal dimension -- the walk dimension -- that indicates the diffusive or anomalous nature of the underlying random walk process. Here we report on the experimental retrieval of this key quantity, using light waves propagating in disordered media. The approach is based on measurements of the time-resolved transmission, in particular on how the lifetime scales with sample size. We show that this allows one to retrieve the walk dimension and apply the concept to samples with varying degree of fractal heterogeneity. In addition, the method provi…
Branched flow is an interesting phenomenon that can occur in diverse systems. It is usually linear in the sense that the flow does not alter the medium properties. Branched flow of light on thin films was recently discovered. A question of interest is thus if nonlinear branched flow of light can also occur. Here we found using particle-in-cell simulations that with intense laser propagating in plasma with randomly uneven density distribution, photoionization by the laser can locally enhance the density variations along the laser paths and thus the branching of the laser. However, too-intense l…
We experimentally demonstrate optical control of filamentation that occurs during propagation of intense, ultrashort laser pulses through crystals like barium fluoride and sapphire. Control is exercised by rotating the plane of polarization of the incident laser radiation and is demonstrated by directly visualizing filamentation in the bulk via six-photon absorption-induced fluorescence and, concomitantly, by probing the spectral and spatial properties of white light that is generated.
We demonstrate the possibility to run a single-pass free-electron laser in a new dynamical regime, which can be exploited to perform two-colour pump-probe experiments in the VUV/X-ray domain, using the free-electron laser emission both as a pump and as a probe. The studied regime is induced by triggering the free-electron laser process with a powerful laser pulse, carrying a significant and adjustable frequency chirp. As a result, the emitted light is eventually split in two sub-pulses, whose spectral and temporal separations can be independently controlled. We provide a theoretical descriptio…
The first- and second-order temporal interference between two independent thermal and laser light beams is discussed by employing the superposition principle in Feynman's path integral theory. It is concluded that the first-order temporal interference pattern can not be observed by superposing thermal and laser light, while the second-order temporal interference pattern can be observed in the same condition. These predictions are experimentally verified by employing pseudothermal light to simulate thermal light. The conclusions and method in the paper can be generalized to any order interferen…
We show that the reduction in photon number fluctuations at laser threshold often cited as a fundamental laser property does not occur in typical semiconductor lasers such as the ones commonly used in modern technological applications today. Indeed, such lasers may still exhibit thermal intensity fluctuations far above threshold. We therefore conclude that sub-thermal intensity fluctuations cannot be regarded as a necessary property of laser light. Rather, one should distinguish betwen a thermal laser regime and a sub-thermal laser regime.
In the course of the high-frequency upgrade of GEO 600, its optical configuration was extended by a squeezed-light laser [1]. Recently, a non-classically enhanced measurement sensitivity of GEO 600 was reported [2]. In this paper, a characterization of the squeezed-light laser is presented. Thereupon, the status of the integration into GEO 600 is reviewed, focussing on the sources of optical loss limiting the shot noise reduction by squeezing at the moment. Finally, the possibilities for a future loss reduction are discussed.
After the discovery of laser therapy it was realized it has useful application of wound healing and reduce pain, but due to the poor understanding of the mechanism and dose response this technique remained to be controversial for therapeutic applications. In order to understand the working and effectiveness different experiments were performed to determine the laser beam effect at the cellular and tissue level. This article discusses the mechanism of beam interaction at tissues and cellular level with different light sources and dosimetry principles for clinical application of low level laser …
When a relativistic laser pulse with high photon density interacts with a specially tailored thin foil target, a strong torque is exerted on the resulting spiral-shaped foil plasma, or light fan. Because of its structure, the latter can gain significant orbital angular momentum (OAM), and the opposite OAM is imparted to the reflected light, creating a twisted relativistic light pulse. Such an interaction scenario is demonstrated by particle-in-cell simulation as well as analytical modeling, and should be easily verifiable in the laboratory. As important characters, twisted relativistic light p…
An analogous laser action of magnons would be a subject of interest and is crucial for the study of nonlinear magnons spintronics. Here, we demonstrate the magnon laser behavior based on Brillouin light scattering in a ferrimagnetic insulator sphere which supports optical whispering gallery modes and magnon resonances. We show that the excited magnon plays what has traditionally been the role of the Stokes wave and is coherently amplified during the Brillouin scattering process, making magnon laser possible. Furthermore, the stimulating excited magnon number increasing exponentially with the i…
Modification of surface and volume of sapphire is shown to affect reflected and transmitted light at THz spectral range. Structural modifications were made using ultra-short 230 fs laser pulses at 1030 nm and 257.5 nm wavelengths forming surface ripples of ~250 nm and 60 nm period, respectively. Softening of the transverse optical phonon TO1 mode due to disorder was the most pronounced in reflection from laser ablated surface. It is shown that sub-surface periodic patterns of laser damage sites have also modified reflection spectrum due to coupling of THz radiation with phonons. Application po…
Diode lasers enable one to continuously cover the 730 to 1100 nm range as well as the 370 to 550 nm range by frequency doubling, but a large part of the electro-magnetic spectrum spanning from green to red remains accessible only through expensive and unpractical optically pumped dye lasers. Here we devise a method to multiply the frequency of optical waves by a factor 3/2 with a conversion that is phase-coherent and highly efficient. Together with harmonic generation, it will enable one to cover the visible spectrum with semiconductor lasers, opening new avenues in important fields such as la…
Self-induced transparency pulses propagating in a random medium embedded in a two-level system can transfer energy to localized Anderson states. This allows the onset of two-level laser-like action.
We derive upper and lower bounds on the absorption of ultraintense laser light by solids as a function of fundamental laser and plasma parameters. These limits emerge naturally from constrained optimization techniques applied to a generalization of the laser-solid interaction as a strongly-driven, relativistic, two degree of freedom Maxwell-Vlasov system. We demonstrate that the extrema and the phase-space-averaged absorption must always increase with intensity, and increase most rapidly when $10^{18} < I_L \ λ_L^2 < 10^{20}$ W $μ$m$^2/$cm$^{2}$. Our results indicate that the fundamental empir…
The scheme of the XUV/X-ray free electron laser based on the optical undulator created by two overlapped transverse laser beams is analyzed. A kinetic theoretical description and an ad hoc numerical model are developed to account for the finite energy spread, angular divergence and the spectral properties of the electron beam in the optical lattice. The theoretical findings are compared to the results of the one- and three-dimensional numerical modeling with the spectral free electron laser code PLARES.
The role of coherent population oscillations is evidenced in the noise spectrum of an ultra-low noise lasers. This effect is isolated in the intensity noise spectrum of an optimized single-frequency vertical external cavity surface emitting laser. The coherent population oscillations induced by the lasing mode manifest themselves through their associated dispersion that leads to slow light effects probed by the spontaneous emission present in the non-lasing side modes.
We present a method for self-consistently including the optical cavity field into Monte Carlo-based carrier transport simulations. This approach allows for an analysis of the actual lasing operation in quantum cascade lasers, considering effects such as gain saturation and longitudinal mode competition. Simulation results for a terahertz quantum cascade laser are found to be consistent with experiment.
Vectorially structured light has emerged as an enabling tool in many diverse applications, from communication to imaging, exploiting quantum-like correlations courtesy of a non-separable spatially varying polarization structure. Creating these states at the source remains challenging and is presently limited to two-dimensional vectorial states by customized lasers. Here we invoke ray-wave duality in a simple laser cavity to produce polarization marked multi-path modes that are non-separable in three degrees of freedom and in eight dimensions. As a topical example, we use our laser to produce t…
We study light emission patterns from stadium-shaped semiconductor (GaAs) microcavity lasers theoretically and experimentally. Performing systematic wave calculations for passive cavity modes, we demonstrate that the averaging by low-loss modes, such as those realized in multi-mode lasing, generates an emission pattern in good agreement with the ray model's prediction. In addition, we show that the dependence of experimental far-field emission patterns on the aspect ratio of the stadium cavity is well reproduced by the ray model.
Quantum optics did not, and could not, flourish without the laser. The present paper is not about the principles of laser construction, still less a history of how the laser was invented. Rather, it addresses the question: what are the fundamental features that distinguish laser light from thermal light? The obvious answer, "laser light is coherent", is, I argue, so vague that it must be put aside at the start, albeit to revisit later. A more specific, quantum theoretic, version, "laser light is in a coherent state", is simply wrong in this context: both laser light and thermal light can equal…
Fiber lasers entered numerous applications due to their high efficiency and superior stability. Particularly in space, those lasers have to fulfill additional requirements set by the harsh environment, typically characterized by large temperature gradients, vibration and shock as well as different kinds of radiation. In this contribution, we will report on the development and realization of a fiber laser intended to operate as part of a Rendezvous and Docking 3D-Lidar system considering the aforementioned specialties. Power scaling of pulsed as well as continuous-wave fiber lasers is yet anoth…
We present a method of rendering aerial and volumetric graphics using femtosecond lasers. A high-intensity laser excites a physical matter to emit light at an arbitrary 3D position. Popular applications can then be explored especially since plasma induced by a femtosecond laser is safer than that generated by a nanosecond laser. There are two methods of rendering graphics with a femtosecond laser in air: Producing holograms using spatial light modulation technology, and scanning of a laser beam by a galvano mirror. The holograms and workspace of the system proposed here occupy a volume of up t…
The fluctuations in the elastic light scattering spectra of normal and dysplastic human cervical tissues analyzed through wavelet transform based techniques reveal clear signatures of self-similar behavior in the spectral fluctuations. Significant differences in the power law behavior ascertained through the scaling exponent was observed in these tissues. The strong dependence of the elastic light scattering on the size distribution of the scatterers manifests in the angular variation of the scaling exponent. Interestingly, the spectral fluctuations in both these tissues showed multi-fractalit…
We develop an analytical theory for diffusive random lasers by coupling the transport theory of the disordered medium to the semiclassical laser rate equations, accounting for (coherent) stimulated and (incoherent) spontaneous emission. From the causality of wave propagation in an amplifying, diffusive medium we derive a novel length scale which we identify with the average mode radius of the lasing quasi-modes. We show further that loss at the surface of the laser-active medium is crucial in order to stabilize a stationary lasing state. The solution of the transport theory of random lasers fo…
The stability of a light sail riding on a laser beam is analyzed both analytically and numerically. Conical sails on Gaussian beams, which have been studied in the past, are shown to be unstable without active control or additional mechanical modifications. A new architecture for a passively stable sail-and-beam configuration is proposed. The novel spherical shell design for the sail is capable of "beam riding" without the need for active feedback control. Full three-dimensional ray-tracing simulations are performed to verify our analytical results.
