Outgoing Field Research Articles

Analyzing the acceleration time and reflectance of light sails made from homogeneous and core-shell spheres

Deciding on appropriate materials and designs for use in light sails, like the one proposed in the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, is a topic that requires much care and forethought. Here, we offer a feasible option in the form of metasurfaces made of periodically arranged homogeneous and core-shell spheres. Using the re-normalized T–matrix from Mie theory, we explore the reflectance, absorptance, and acceleration time of such metasurfaces. We focus on spheres made from aluminum, silicon, silicon dioxide, and combinations thereof. Since the light sails are foreseen to be accelerated using Earth-based laser arrays to 20% of the speed of light, one needs to account for relativistic effects. As a result, a high broadband reflectance is essential for effective propulsion. We identify metasurfaces that offer such properties combined with a low absorptance to reduce heating and deformation. We highlight a promising extension to the case of a metasurface made from homogeneous silicon spheres, as already discussed in the literature, by adding a layer of silicon dioxide. The high broadband reflectance of the silicon and silicon dioxide combination is explained by the favorable interference of the multipolar contributions of the outgoing field up to quadrupolar order. We also consider the impact of an embedding material characterized by different refractive indices. Refractive indices up to 1.13 maintain over 90% reflectance without re-optimizing the light sail.

Dynamic permittivity of confined water under a static background field.

Molecular and collective reorientations in interfacial water are by-and-large decelerated near surfaces subjected to outgoing electric fields (pointing from surface to liquid, i.e., when the surface carries positive charge). In incoming fields at negatively charged surfaces, these rates show a nonmonotonic dependence on field strength where fastest reorientations are observed when the field alignment barely offsets the polarizing effects due to interfacial hydrogen bonding. This extremum coincides with a peak of local static permittivity. We use molecular dynamics simulations to explore the impact of background static field on high frequency AC permittivity in hydration water under an electric field mimicking the conditions inside a capacitor where one of the confinement walls is subject to an outgoing field and the other one to an incoming field. At strong static fields, the absorption peak undergoes a monotonic blue shift upon increasing field strength in both hydration layers. At intermediate fields, however, the hydration region at the wall under an incoming field (the negative capacitor plate) features a red shift coinciding with maximal static-permittivity and reorientation-rate. The shift is mostly determined by the variation of the inverse static dielectric constant as proposed for mono-exponentially decaying polarization correlations. Conversely, hydration water at the opposite (positively charged) surface features a monotonic blue shift consistent with conventional saturation. The sensitivity of absorption peaks on the field suggests that surface charge densities could be deduced from sub-THz dielectric spectroscopy experiments in porous materials when interfaces accommodate a major fraction of water contained in the system.

High sensitivity gas detection based on Au waveguide

Hydrogen, as a representative of the new energy source, has great potential for development, and the detection of the low concentration of hydrogen plays a crucial role in process safety control. In this paper, a gas sensor based on a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) structure with high sensitivity and low response time is proposed. The sensor is bilaterally coupled with a ring resonant cavity and a metal nanopillar, and the outgoing field superposition is achieved by bilaterally coupling the resonant cavity to achieve a lower transmittance, which facilitates detection. The symmetry of the structure was broken by different methods, and the results showed that the complexity and response time of the structure increased significantly after breaking the symmetry, but the transmittance appeared to decrease and the transmission characteristic curve was independent of the coupling phase. The waveguide structure shows a highly linear relationship between resonance wavelength and refractive index with a maximum sensitivity of 2433.00 nm/RIU when used for refractive index sensing, and a maximum sensitivity of −2.61 nm/% when used for hydrogen gas sensing. For methane gas sensing, the maximum sensitivity is −9.22 nm/%.

Superradiant Detection of Microscopic Optical Dipolar Interactions.

The interaction between light and cold atoms is a complex phenomenon potentially featuring many-body resonant dipole interactions. A major obstacle toward exploring these quantum resources of the system is macroscopic light propagation effects, which not only limit the available time for the microscopic correlations to locally build up, but also create a directional, superradiant emission background whose variations can overwhelm the microscopic effects. In this Letter, we demonstrate a method to perform "background-free" detection of the microscopic optical dynamics in a laser-cooled atomic ensemble. This is made possible by transiently suppressing the macroscopic optical propagation over a substantial time, before a recall of superradiance that imprints the effect of the accumulated microscopic dynamics onto an efficiently detectable outgoing field. We apply this technique to unveil and precisely characterize a density-dependent, microscopic dipolar dephasing effect that generally limits the lifetime of optical spin-wave order in ensemble-based atom-light interfaces.

Time-resolved plasmon-assisted generation of optical-vortex pulses

The microscopic mechanism of the light-matter interactions that induce orbital angular momentum (OAM) in electromagnetic fields is not thoroughly understood. In this work, we employ Archimedean spiral vortex generators in time-resolved numerical simulations using the Octopus code to observe the behind-the-scenes of OAM generation. We send a perfect circularly-polarized plane-wave light onto plasmonic optical vortex generators and observe the resulting twisted light formation with complete spatio-temporal information. In agreement with previous works, we find that emission from the plasmonic spiral branches shapes the vortex-like structure and governs the OAM generation in the outgoing electromagnetic field. To characterize the generated beam further, we emulate the emission from vortex generators with current emitters preserving the spiral geometry. We subject a point-particle system to the generated field and record the orbital angular momentum transfer between the electromagnetic field and the point particle. Finally, we probe the OAM density locally by studying the induced classical trajectory of point particles, which provides further insight into the spatio-temporal features of the induced OAM.

Estimation of dislocated phases and tunable orbital angular momentum using two cylindrical lenses.

A first-order optical system consisting of two cylindrical lenses separated by a distance is considered. It is found to be non-conserving of orbital angular momentum of the incoming paraxial light field. The first-order optical system is effectively demonstrated to estimate phases with dislocations using a Gerchberg-Saxton-type phase retrieval algorithm by making use of measured intensities. Tunable orbital angular momentum in the outgoing light field is experimentally demonstrated using the considered first-order optical system by varying the distance of separation between the two cylindrical lenses.

Polarity-dependence of the nonlinear dielectric response in interfacial water.

Molecular dynamics simulations are used to study the nonlinear dielectric responses of a confined aqueous film in a planar nanopore under perpendicular electric fields at varied voltages between confining graphene sheets. Dielectric saturation reminiscent of the bulk phase behavior is prevalent at very strong fields, whereas we observe a nonmonotonic permittivity dependence on the electric field at intermediate strengths where field-alignment and spontaneous polarization of interfacial water are of comparable magnitude. The coupling between the two effects results in distinct dielectric responses at opposite confinement walls. The normal component of both the differential dielectric constant and dielectric difference constant tensors averaged over the region closer to the wall under an incoming electric field (field pointing from the liquid to the solid phase) initially increases with the strength of the imposed field. The differential permittivity peaks at a field strength previously shown to offset the surface-induced orientation bias of hydration molecules at this wall. Further strengthening of the field results in a conventional saturation behavior. At the opposite wall (subject to outgoing field) and in the central region of the water slab, the nonlinear dielectric response resembles bulklike saturation. The conditions at the permittivity extremum coincide with the window of accelerated reorientation rates of interfacial water molecules under an incoming field we uncovered in earlier molecular dynamics analyses.

A subwavelength atomic array switched by a single Rydberg atom

Enhancing light–matter coupling at the level of single quanta is essential for numerous applications in quantum science. The cooperative optical response of subwavelength atomic arrays has been found to open new pathways for such strong light–matter couplings, while simultaneously offering access to multiple spatial modes of the light field. Efficient single-mode free-space coupling to such arrays has been reported, but spatial control over the modes of outgoing light fields has remained elusive. Here, we demonstrate such spatial control over the optical response of an atomically thin mirror formed by a subwavelength array of atoms in free space using a single controlled ancilla atom excited to a Rydberg state. The switching behaviour is controlled by the admixture of a small Rydberg fraction to the atomic mirror, and consequently strong dipolar Rydberg interactions with the ancilla. Driving Rabi oscillations on the ancilla atom, we demonstrate coherent control of the transmission and reflection of the array. These results represent a step towards the realization of quantum coherent metasurfaces, the demonstration of controlled atom–photon entanglement and deterministic engineering of quantum states of light.

Semiclassical gravity phenomenology under the causal-conditional quantum measurement prescription

The semi-classical gravity sourced by the quantum expectation value of the matter's energy-momentum tensor will change the evolution of the quantum state of matter. This effect can be described by the Schroedinger-Newton (SN) equation, where the semi-classical gravity contributes a gravitational potential term depending on the matter quantum state. This state-dependent potential introduces the complexity of the quantum state evolution and measurement in SN theory, which is different for different quantum measurement prescriptions. Previous theoretical investigations on the SN-theory phenomenology in the optomechanical experimental platform were carried out under the so-called post/pre-selection prescription. This work will focus on the phenomenology of SN theory under the causal-conditional prescription, which fits the standard intuition on the continuous quantum measurement process. Under the causal-conditional prescription, the quantum state of the test mass mirrors is conditionally and continuously prepared by the projection of the outgoing light field in the optomechanical system. Therefore a gravitational potential depends on the quantum trajectory is created and further affects the system evolution. In this work, we will systematically study various experimentally measurable signatures of SN theory under the causal-conditional prescription in an optomechanical system, for both the self-gravity and the mutual gravity scenarios. Comparisons between the SN phenomenology under three different prescriptions will also be carefully made. Moreover, we find that quantum measurement can induce a classical correlation between two different optical fields via classical gravity, which is difficult to be distinguished from the quantum correlation of light fields mediated by quantum gravity.

Thermal diffusion coupling mechanism and its application of discrete waveguide

For discrete optical systems integrated into optical fibers, the optical fields of the individual waveguides are coupled and correlated with each other. This paper studies how to adjust the refractive index of discrete waveguides by thermal diffusion, so as to enhance the coupling between discrete waveguides, and also constructs the discrete waveguide thermally diffused model and the thermally diffused coupling model of twin-core and three-core fibers. The multicore fiber is heated different times by a hydrogen-oxygen flame, and the outgoing light field at the end face of the optical fiber is monitored at the same time. Then, the three-dimensional refractive index measurement results of the thermally diffused multicore fiber verify the feasibility of thermal diffusion technology to change the refractive index of discrete waveguides for coupling. Thermal diffusion technology can be used to fabricate multicore fiber couplers. By combining multicore fiber and core-by-core inscribed fiber Bragg grating technology and by using thermal diffusion technology, the single-channel sensing measurement can be realized. The method of changing the refractive index of discrete waveguides through thermal diffusion has the advantages of high integration, high stability, and mass fabrication. The research on the thermal diffusion of discrete waveguides can improve the application potential of multicore fiber sensing systems, and promote the broad application of discrete waveguide structure optical fiber in the fields of optical communication, optical sensing, biomedicine, and artificial intelligence.

Derivation of the Transient and Steady Optical States from the Poles of the S‐Matrix

AbstractThe electromagnetic response of optical systems can be described by scattering operators, S, that link the incoming fields onto the system to the outgoing fields emerging from it. Considerable efforts have been devoted to retrieve the spectral response of the optical systems by expanding the S‐matrix in terms of its singularities. Here a planar optical cavity that allows to derive analytical expressions of poles (in the case of lossless materials) and residues, and reflection/transmission Fresnel coefficients in the harmonic domain is considered. This singularity expansion is used to derive the impulse response function (IRF) of the cavity with respect to the poles of the S‐matrix. The singular expression of the IRF consists of contributions oscillating at the excitation frequency and exponentially decaying contributions that impact signals only during the transient regimes. The convergence of this approach is thoroughly discussed in the case of a dispersive and metallic slab. The convergence is achieved by increasing the number of poles in the singularity expansion. It can also be achieved by considering only the poles within the spectral range of interest plus a fictive resonant term encapsulating the contribution of the singularities outside this spectral range.

Correlated two-photon modulation based on nonlinear effects in a photonic synthetic lattice

In addition to the reduction in the experimental complexity, generating correlated photonic pairs using nonlinear interactions in a synthetic lattice also benefits the high tunability of all relevant parameters. Here we found that the two-photon correlation can be modulated by using a synthetic lattice composed of the orbital angular momentum of light with a nonlinear Kerr interaction on a single site. By calculating the $S$ matrix for single-photon and two-photon scattering, we analyze the transmission and correlation properties of the outgoing photons. The presence of finite bandwidth enables the complete transfer of a single incident photon into the synthetic lattice inside the cavity. For two incident photons, the nonlinear Kerr interaction can lead to various correlated photonic pairs. The spectrum of the correlated outgoing fields can be controlled by changing the total energy of the incident photons or altering the interaction parameters. In addition, the presence of completely transferring the single incident photon provides an ideal starting point for detecting the correlated properties between the outgoing photons even for very weak interactions. The findings of the present study provide a new perspective for engineering the correlation properties of outgoing photons in synthetic systems.

Fiber SPR two-dimensional micro displacement sensor based on the coaxial double waveguide with a conical structure.

Fiber SPR micro displacement sensor cannot be used for two-dimensional displacement sensing at present. In this paper, we proposed and demonstrated a fiber SPR two-dimensional micro displacement sensor based on the coaxial double waveguide with a conical structure. The coaxial double waveguide is fused into a cone as the light injection fiber, and two different forms of outgoing light fields can be obtained through two cores of the fiber. The horn shaped light field emitted by the ring core of the coaxial double waveguide can cooperate with the sensing fiber to realize the micro displacement sensing in the x-axis direction. And the straight beam emitted by the middle core of the coaxial double waveguide can cooperate with the sensing fiber to realize the micro displacement sensing in the y-axis direction. Through simulation analysis and experimental test, its average wavelength sensitivity and light intensity sensitivity of the x-axis displacement are 0.0537nm/µm and 0.000124a.u./µm, respectively. And that of the y-axis displacement are 0.315nm/µm and 0.00277a.u./µm, respectively. The proposed fiber sensor realizes the two-dimensional displacement sensing based on SPR, which can be widely used in the fields of two-dimensional micro displacement measurement and two-dimensional position precision positioning.

Surveillance of few-mode fiber-communication channels with a single hidden layer neural network.

Multi- and few-mode fibers (FMFs) promise to enhance the capacity of optical communication networks by orders of magnitude. The key for this evolution was the strong advancement of computational approaches that allowed inherent complex light transmission to be surpassed, learned, or controlled, reined in by modal crosstalk and mode-dependent losses. However, complex light transmission through FMFs can be learned by a single hidden layer neural network (NN). The emerging developments in NNs additionally allow the implementation of novel concepts for security enhancements in optical communication. Once the transmission characteristics of FMFs are learned, it is possible to survey the incoming and outgoing light fields via monitoring channels during data transmission. If an eavesdropper tries to gain unauthorized access to the FMF, its transmission properties are impaired through sensitive modal crosstalk. This process is registered by the NN and thus the eavesdropper is revealed. With our solution, the security of optical communication can be improved.

The formulations based on the indirect boundary element method for the acoustic characterization of an arbitrarily shaped source in a bounded noisy environment

In this paper, the formulations based on the indirect boundary element method (indirect BEM) are proposed to recover the acoustic characterization of an arbitrarily shaped source in a bounded noisy environment. The formulations for determining the outgoing pressure field and the scattered pressure field are derived by the indirect BEM. The formulation of the outgoing pressure field derived by the indirect BEM has a unified expression with that derived by the direct BEM. The proposed method could recover the free-field pressure radiated from a target source with an enclosed or unenclosed surface. Four numerical simulations about these two cases, two sources with different measuring surfaces, are performed to validate the proposed method. A comparison of recovering the free-field pressure radiated from a target source with an enclosed surface with the proposed method and the method based on direct BEM is made.

Simulations and Experiments of the Soil Temperature Distribution after 2.45-GHz Short-Time Term Microwave Treatment

Microwave treatment is a green and pollution-free soil disinfection method. The application of microwaves to disinfect soil before cultivation is highly important to increase crop yields and protect the ecological environment. The electromagnetic field is an important parameter influencing the soil temperature field in the process of microwave soil treatment, and the change in soil temperature directly affects soil disinfection. Therefore, this article carried out research on the heating pattern in North China loess due to microwave treatment. First, COMSOL software was employed to simulate the microwave soil treatment process to analyze microwave penetration into soil. Second, with the application of microwaves at the designed frequency produced with a 2.45-GHz tunable microwave generating microdevice, soil with water contents of 0%, 10%, 20%, and 30% was treated for 10~60 s (at 10-s time intervals), and experiments on the influence of the microwave output power, treatment time, and soil moisture content on the soil temperature were performed via the controlled variable method. The simulation results indicate that with increasing soil moisture content, the microwave frequency inside the soil model increases, and the electric field intensity value decreases in the model at the same depth. After microwaves traverse through the 20-cm soil model, the incident field strength is three orders of magnitude lower than the outgoing field strength. The results of the microwave soil treatment experiment reveal that: (1) Compared to microwave output power levels of 1.8 and 1.6 kW, a level of 2 kW is more suitable for microwave soil disinfection. (2) After treatment, the highest temperature occurs on the soil surface, not within the soil. (3) The location of the highest soil internal temperature after microwave treatment increasingly approaches the soil surface with increasing soil moisture content, and the microwave output power does not affect the location of the highest soil internal temperature. Combining the electromagnetic field simulation and microwave soil treatment experiment results, it was found that the higher the field strength is, the higher the temperature value, and the highest soil internal temperature after microwave treatment often occurs at the first electromagnetic wave peak.

Recovering the Free-Field Acoustic Characteristics of a Vibrating Structure from Bounded Noisy Underwater Environments.

The vibrational behavior of an underwater structure in the free field is different from that in bounded noisy environments because the fluid–structure interaction is strong in the water and the vibration of the structure caused by disturbing fields (the reflections by boundaries and the fields radiated by sources of disturbances) cannot be ignored. The conventional free field recovery (FFR) technique can only be used to eliminate disturbing fields without considering the difference in the vibrational behavior of the structure in the free field and the complex environment. To recover the free-field acoustic characteristics of a structure from bounded noisy underwater environments, a method combining the boundary element method (BEM) with the vibro-acoustic coupling method is presented. First, the pressures on the measurement surface are obtained. Second, the outgoing sound field and the rigid body scattered sound field are calculated by BEM. Then, the vibro-acoustic coupling method is employed to calculate the elastically radiated scattered sound field. Finally, the sound field radiated by the structure in the free field is recovered by subtracting the rigid body scattered sound field and the elastically radiated scattered sound field from the outgoing sound field. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by simulation results.

Negative Transient Flux in the Near Field of a Subwavelength Source

The emission of waves by a source is often analyzed in the Fourier domain, which hampers the discovery of transient wave phenomena. Based on a fully temporal analysis, the authors observe in acoustic experiments that the energy can flow backward for short durations in the near field of a deep-subwavelength source in a homogenous medium. Through an impedance analysis, this negative transient flux phenomenon is ascribed to the geometry of the outgoing field. This finding is generic and may find applications in emission and scattering scenarios and could be useful for designing time-varying media.

Interaction of massless minimally coupled scalar field with spinor field in de Sitter universe

The interaction of massless minimally coupled scalar field and spinor field [Formula: see text] is investigated and the behavior of interaction and scattering matrix in Minkowski limit is studied. It is seen that the massless minimally coupled scalar field operator, the interaction Lagrangian and the scattering matrix become zero. Also, the incoming and outgoing spinor fields, which in de Sitter spacetime are different and are interacted with massless minimally coupled scalar field, in null curvature limit are the same and no interaction seen. In other words, the massless minimally coupled scalar field is dependent on curvature and can be considered as a part of a gravitational field.

Instability of finite-amplitude gravity–capillary progressive ring waves by an oscillating surface-piercing body

We investigate the instability of finite-amplitude progressive ring waves in deep water, which are radiated by the time-periodic oscillation of a half-submerged sphere (with radius ), under the influence of gravity and surface tension. We use direct numerical simulations of fully nonlinear wave–body interactions to quantify the temporal–spatial evolution of the base and perturbed outgoing ring wave fields, from which the stability of ring waves is analysed. The numerical simulation is based on a mixed Euler–Lagrangian quadratic boundary-element method and accounts for fully nonlinear wave–wave and wave–body interactions in the context of potential flow. We find that the progressive gravity–capillary ring waves (with frequency ) become unstable to (small-amplitude) radial cross-wave disturbances when the body-motion parameter exceeds the threshold value , where is the amplitude of body oscillation and is the wavenumber of the ring wave at subharmonic frequency . The predicted from nonlinear simulations under the assumption of ideal fluid, which decreases with increasing , is generally smaller than the experimental measurement of Tatsuno et al. (Rep. Res. Inst. Appl. Mech. Kyushu University, vol. 17, 1969, pp. 195–215) by approximately 50 %. When the viscous effects in body-surface and free-surface boundary layers are taken into account, the predicted matches the experimental data excellently. The unstable modes are characterized as the progressive radial cross-waves at the subharmonic frequency ( ) with the growth rates generally increasing with . The maximum growth rate is achieved for the cross-wave mode with the azimuthal wavenumber . These distinctive features of instability obtained in numerical simulations are consistent with the experimental observations. From the comparison with the weakly nonlinear analysis of Shen & Liu (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 869, 2019, pp. 439–467), it is found that inclusion of finite-amplitude ring wave effects generally reduces the growth rate of unstable modes but has an insignificant influence on the shape of unstable modes and the value of . Moreover, for moderately steep ring waves, nonlinear interactions of a few unstable modes can excite broadbanded unstable subharmonic cross-wave modes, leading to the formation/observation of distinctive non-axisymmetric wave patterns during long-time evolutions.